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The laws of successful war in one generation
would ensure defeat in another.

— General of the Army Ulysses S. Grant

Never tell people how to do things.
Tell them what to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity.

— General George Patton, Jr., USA, 1947

Organizations created to fight the last
war better are not going to win the next.

— General James Gavin, USA, 1947

There's a risk. I submit that the risk
of not sharing [information] today is
a lot greater than the risk of sharing.

— General Richard Myers, USAF
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2005

AIR national guard

coming next . . .

Logistics and Support

plus

Special Feature: CJCS Essay Contest Winners,

Strategic Gaming,

New Series: Interagency Dialogue
Air Support of the Allied Landings in Italy,

and more in issue 39, 4 th Quarter 2005 of JFQ

IUDU

Press

JPQ

JOINT FORCE QUARTERLY

A Professional Military and Security Studies Journal
Published for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
by National Defense University Press
National Defense University
Washington, DC

■ CONTENTS

1 From the Chairman

by Richard B. Myers

7 From the Editor

by Merrick E. Krause

JFQ FORUM

8 Transformation During War

1 0 Defining Integrated Operations

by Richard D. Downie

14 How Joint Are We and
Can We Be Better?

by Chuck Harrison

20 Getting Transformation Right

by Richard D. Hooker, Jr., H.R. McMaster,
and Dave Gray

28 Transformation in Concept
and Policy

by Stephen J. Cimbaia

34 Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
New Proposals for
Defense Reform

by Clark A. Murdock and
Richard W. Weitz

42 The Military Utility
of Understanding
Adversary Culture

by Montgomery McFate

49 Transforming

Military Diplomacy

by Timothy C. Shea

53 Expert Knowledge in a Joint
Task Force Headquarters

by Joseph C. Geraci

The cover shows Air Force pararescuemen extraction train-
ing at Baghdad International Airport, (U.S. Air Force/James
W. Bowman). Front inside cover features [top to bottom |
air support operations Airmen, attached to 1st Infantry
Division, calling in close air support at Sammarah, Iraq (U.S.
Army); Marines positioning for close air support assault in A1
Anbar Province, Iraq (1st Marine Division Combat Camera/
Jonathan C. Knauth); Army OH-58D provides close air sup-
port in A1 Shahabi, Iraq (U.S. Air Force/Shane A. Cuomo);
and Navy ordnancemen loading laser-guided GBU-12
bombs aboard USS Harry S. Truman (U.S. Navy/Kristopher
Wilson). The table of contents shows [left] Marine observing live fire operations
(Fleet Combat Camera Group, Pacific/Ted Banks); [right] postflight operations on
EC-135 AWACS, exercise Red Flag 2005 (440th Communications Squadron/Patrick
M. Kuminecz). The back inside cover is USNS Artie guided through Suez Canal by
Egyptian tugboat (U.S. Navy /Kristopher Wilson). Back cover shows [top] loading
C-5 for Operational Readiness Inspection (125th Fighter Wing/Shelley Gill); [left
to right] Marines set to board LCU at Kuwait Naval Base (Fleet Combat Camera
Group, Pacific/Richard J. Brunson); Indonesian child aboard USNS Mercy (Fleet
Combat Camera Group, Pacific/Jeffrey Russell); and Soldiers mount M1A1 Abrams
tanks in South Korea (1st Combat Camera Squadron/Susanne M. Day).

60 A Deployable Joint
Headquarters for the
NATO Response Force

by Michael L. McGinnis

68 Expeditionary Airborne
Battlespace Command
and Control

by Paul Dolson

76 Chinese and American
Network Warfare

by Timothy L. Thomas

2 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

ISSUE THIRTY-EIGHT

COMMENTARY

RECALL

100 Joint Operations in the

Southwest Pacific, 1943-1945

by Kevin C. Holzimmer

OFF THE SHELF

109 Strategy for Chaos:

A Book Review

by Barry Watts

110 The Modern Prince:

A Book Review

by Jaknb J. Grygiel

11 2 A War of a Different Kind:
A Book Review

by Randall J. Larsen

84 Transforming the
"Retention Sector"

by Meredith Leyva

92 Joint Professionals:

Here Today, Here to Stay

by Michael A. Coss

Corrections

In issue 36, the caption for the cover photo states that
National Guardsmen and Marines are shown, but Marines
attached to a Virginia National Guard unit in Iraq are depicted.

The caption for the photograph on page 30 in issue 36
mistakenly identifies Marines as Army Reservists.

In issue 36, book reviewer Janeen M. Klinger was
misidentified. She is a professor of national security in the
Command and Staff College at the Marine Corps University.

In issue 37, the caption for the photograph on page 35
misidentifies F-16CGs as F-16CJs.

Joint Force Quarterly

Stephen J. Flanagan, PhD

Director,

Institute for National Strategic Studies

Editor-in-Chief

Colonel Debra Taylor, USA

Deputy Director of NDU Press,
Institute for National Strategic Studies
Managing Editor

Colonel Merrick E. Krause, USAF

Director of NDU Press,
Institute for National Strategic Studies
Editor

Martin J. Peters, Jr.

Production Supervisor

Calvin B. Kelley
George C. Maerz
Jeffrey D. Smotherman, PhD
Lisa M. Yambrick

Editorial Staff

U.S. Government Printing Office

Creative Services

Design

Garrett M. Mills

Intern

Joint Force Quarterly is published by the National Defense
University Press for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. JFQ
is the Chairman’s flagship joint military and security studies journal
designed to inform members of the U.S. Armed Forces, allies, and
other partners on joint and integrated operations; national security
polity and strategy; efforts to combat terrorism; homeland secu-
rity; and developments in training and joint professional military
education to transform America’s military and security apparatus
to better meet tomorrow’s challenges while protecting freedom
today. NDU Press produces JFQ four times a year. The goal of NDU
Press is to provide defense and interagency decisionmakers, allies,
and the attentive public with attractive, balanced, and thoroughly
researched professional publications.

This is the authoritative, official U.S. Department of Defense
edition of JFQ. Any copyrighted portions of this journal may not be
reproduced or extracted without permission of the copyright pro-
prietors. Joint Force Quarterly should be acknowledged whenever
material is quoted from or based on its content.

The last page of this issue contains information on
contributing to JFQ. Please visit NDU Press and Joint Force Quar-
terly online at www.ndu.edu/inss/press/nduphp.html for more
on upcoming issues, an electronic archive of JFQ articles, and
access to many other useful NDU Press publications. Constructive
comments and contributions are important to us. Please direct
editorial communications to the convenient electronic feedback
form on the NDU Press Web site or write to:

Editor, Joint Force Quarterly
National Defense University Press
300 Fifth Avenue (Bldg. 62, Room 212)

Fort Lesley J. McNair
Washington, DC 20319-5066
Telephone: (202) 685-4220/DSN 325-4220
FAX: (202) 685-4219/DSN 325-4219
Email: JFQ1@ndu.edu

ISSN 1 070-0692 3 d Quarter, July 2005

The views expressed or implied are the authors’ and do not necessarily reflect
the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of
Defense, or the U.S. Government.

A PROFESSIONAL MILITARY AND SECURITY JOURNAL

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 3

A Word from the

Gen Richard B. Myers, USAF,
talking with commanders at
Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan

We must hold our minds alert and receptive to the
application of unglimpsed methods and weapons. The
next war will be won in the future, not in the past.
We must go on, or we will go under.

— General Douglas MacArthur, USA, 1931

M any in the military community
are familiar with change, but the
rate of today's change — as we
fight a new kind of war against a
new kind of enemy — presents unique challenges.
Understanding this landscape is essential; trans-
forming in response is imperative.

Our response is a continuing, deliberate cam-
paign to transform the military across the ser-
vices. This issue of Joint Force Quarterly highlights
the need to maintain our transformation efforts

while we are at war. We must continue moving
forward with the right capabilities to meet today's
challenges while also ensuring that the Armed
Forces are positioned to meet the threats of the
21 st century.

Though much has been written and dis-
cussed concerning the technological aspects of
transformation, material solutions alone cannot
transform our forces. Successful transformation
must include a cultural component — creating an
environment conducive to change within our or-
ganizations. Without creating a parallel culture of
change in the Armed Forces, our transformation
will fall far short of its fullest potential. Changing
organizations always begins with leadership.

(continued on page 4)

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 1

11 th Communications Squadron (Scott M. Ash)

Joint Force Quarterly

■ a word from the chairman

Gen Richard B. Myers, USAF

Publisher

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Lt Gen Michael M. Dunn, USAF ■ National Defense University
Chairman

BG David A. Armstrong, USA (Ret.) ■ Office of the Chairman
Maj Gen John J. Catton, Jr., USAF ■ The Joint Staff
A. Denis Clift ■ Joint Military Intelligence College
RADM Patrick W. Dunne, USN ■ Naval Postgraduate School
Maj Gen Robert J. Elder, Jr., USAF ■ Air War College
Col George E. Flemming, USMC ■ Marine Corps War College
Brig Gen (S) Randal D. Fullhart, USAF ■ Air Command and Staff College
MG David H. Huntoon, USA ■ U.S. Army War College
RADM Richard D. Jaskot, USN ■ National War College
VADM Timothy J. Keating, USN ■ The Joint Staff
Col Walter L. Niblock, USMC ■ Marine Corps Command and Staff College
MG Kenneth J. Quinlan, Jr., USA ■ Joint Forces Staff College
RADM Jacob L. Shuford, USN ■ Naval War College
BG Volney J. Warner, USA ■ U.S. Army Command and General Staff College
MajGen Frances C. Wilson, USMC ■ Industrial College of the Armed Forces

EDITORIAL BOARD

Stephen J. Flanagan ■ National Defense University
Chairman

Richard K. Betts ■ Columbia University
Col John M. Calvert, USAF ■ Joint Forces Staff College
Stephen D. Chiabotti ■ School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
Eliot A. Cohen ■ The Johns Hopkins University
COL Robert A. Doughty, USA ■ U.S. Military Academy
Aaron L. Friedberg ■ Princeton University
Alan L. Gropman ■ Industrial College of the Armed Forces
Douglas N. Hime ■ Naval War College
Mark H. Jacobsen ■ Marine Corps Command and Staff College
Daniel T. Kuehl ■ Information Resources Management College
Col Anne E. McGee, USAF ■ Industrial College of the Armed Forces
Thomas L. McNaugher ■ The RAND Corporation
Kathleen Mahoney-Norris ■ Air Command and Staff College
William H. J. Manthorpe, Jr. ■ Joint Military Intelligence College
John J. Mearsheimer ■ The University of Chicago
LTG William E. Odom, USA (Ret.) ■ Hudson Institute
Col Thomas C. Skillman, USAF ■ Air War College
COL Robert E. Smith, USA ■ U.S. Army War College
LtGen Bernard E. Trainor, USMC (Ret.) ■ Harvard University
Col Gary West, USAF ■ National War College

(continued from page 1 )

Developing a culture of change in a complex
and uncertain security environment is hard. We
naturally rely on past practices and pull from a
vast reservoir of successful experiences to guide
us through periods of uncertainty, ffowever, we
shortchange our efforts if we simply use new tech-
nology in old ways. For example, the enhanced
situational awareness provided by Common Oper-
ating Picture technology would be lost if we relied
on the Cold War risk-averse approach to sharing
information — the "need to know" mindset versus
today's "need to share."

Creating a culture of change in the Armed
Forces requires leaders at all levels who are will-
ing to take action, to take informed risk, and to
infuse their organizations with new energy. As
military leaders take visible, concrete steps to
make their organizations more flexible and adapt-
able, they create a new environment — one that
supports and rewards innovation, adaptation, and
new processes.

Following the Cold War, each service recog-
nized the momentous change in the geopolitical
environment and began historic change in their
respective organizations — change that not only
embraced the technology of the time but that also
reflected a break from the past and ushered in
new ways of thinking.

In the 1990s, the Navy shifted the focus of
future operations away from the open sea to the
coastlines. The emphasis on littoral warfare, ac-
cording to ... From the Sea: Preparing the Naval
Service for the 21 st Century, "is a new doctrine that
marries Navy and Marine forces priorities. . . .
The Navy and Marine Corps will now respond to
crises and can provide the initial 'enabling' capa-
bility for joint operations." The Army instituted
the Louisiana Maneuvers, which helped lay the
groundwork for the total redesign of the Army for
the 21 st century under Force XXI. The new force
structure would feature a CONUS-based force
projection Army, which was more modular, more
lethal, and more deployable. In the Air Force, the
Air and Space Expeditionary Force (AEF) was a
new approach to providing forces to the combat-
ant commander. The ten AEFs — composed of
paired Air Force combat forces and expedition-
ary combat support resources — were organized,
trained, and equipped to deploy and employ air
and space power quickly.

These changes illustrate the bold leadership
required to break from the past. Such leaders and
their actions reflected a new environment, new

A PROFESSIONAL MILITARY AND SECURITY JOURNAL

4 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Myers

Crewmen conducting
runway check on
F— 117 at Kunsan Air
Base, Korea, where
Airmen from Holloman
Air Force Base are
deployed in support
of air expeditionary
forces in Pacific Region,
August 13, 2004

ways of thinking, and new support for a culture
of change in each of the services. However, these
actions took place during a less volatile and less
threatening security environment. Time was more
abundant. Execution was rooted in tradition and
was at times ponderous and plagued by bureau-
cratic inertia. Today, the threat is unprecedented,
and we must not only respond to the rapidly
changing security environment, but we must do
so at an accelerated rate.

The events of September 11, 2001, coupled
with a global resurgence of terrorism and wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, have ushered in another
period of significant change to the security land-
scape. Like their predecessors, today's Joint Chiefs
of Staff recognize that the post-9/ 11 security envi-
ronment requires adjustments. They also under-
stand the important role a culture of change plays
in the transformation of the Armed Forces and are
taking steps to effect change at an accelerated rate.

■ The Army Chief of Staff is leading change
with a plan to develop the Army into a modular
force. This total redesign from Cold War-style

divisions to more lethal brigade combat teams
(BCTs) is turning the operational Army into a
larger, more powerful, flexible, and rapidly de-
ployable force. BCTs represent a break from the
past — they are stand-alone, self sufficient, tactical
units organized the way they will fight.

■ The Chief of Naval Operations is leading
change in the Navy by instituting the Fleet Re-
sponse Plan (FRP), which enhances the Navy's abil-
ity to surge and augment deployed forces as threats
develop. This initiative provides the Nation's lead-
ers with unprecedented responsiveness in sup-
port of the Global Naval Forward Presence Policy.
The FRP represents a dramatic departure from the
Navy's longstanding approach to readiness.

■ The Air Force Chief of Staff is integrating
the unique strengths of the Active and Reserve
components with the Future Total Force (FTF).
Under this plan, FTF integration models will
enable certain Guard, Reserve, and Active units
of the Air Force to live, work, and train more
closely together. The Future Total Force represents

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 5

U.S. Air Force (Val Gempis)

■ a word from the chairman

Soldiers taking
positions during Quick
Reaction Force exercise
at Lackland Air Force
Base, preparing
to provide flexible
response to any region
in domestic incident,
December 8, 2004

a new approach to use of manpower, of basing
infrastructure, and of current weapons systems.
The enhanced integration taking place under FTF
combines all Air Force capabilities as they meet the
challenges of today's complex threat environment.

These examples are only a few of the initia-
tives the service chiefs have taken to transform
the Armed Forces beyond technological advances
to inspiring a culture of change. They reflect sup-
port for a culture of innovation — from service
staffs in Washington to individual servicemem-
bers in the field. Developing a culture of change
adds value to the technological aspects of trans-
formation by serving as an enabler, allowing us
to maximize the potential of new technologies by
using them in new ways, with a new mindset, as
we face a rapidly changing security environment.

The Department of Defense is also taking steps
to institute a culture of change beyond the services.
Revisions to the Unified Command Plan included
creation of U.S. Northern Command, with the mis-
sion to defend the homeland and territories. The
plan also combined the U.S. Space Command mis-
sion and forces with those of U.S. Strategic Com-
mand. In addition, the Department of Defense has
initiated the National Security Personnel System
and programs such as Network Centric Warfare

and Operationally Responsive Space — actions that
think past traditional approaches and help create
a culture of adaptation and innovation. Though
there has been measurable progress, there is still
much room for improvement in key areas such as
interagency coordination, joint acquisition, and
information sharing.

Beyond the issues facing America's military
loom the challenges of integrating all the instru-
ments of national power as well as international
partners. A similar culture change may be neces-
sary to pull these new elements together.

To maximize the potential of our trans-
formation efforts, we must not only embrace
the promise of technology, but we must do so
with the courage and confidence to break from
the constraints of the past to create a culture of
change — one that supports new thinking, new ap-
proaches, and new ideas. The steps taken by the
Department of Defense and each of the services
represent a starting point. Ultimately, success de-
pends on the willingness of every member of the
Armed Forces to embrace the new mindset that is
required to meet the challenges of our time. JFQ

GENERAL RICHARD B. MYERS, USAF
Chairman

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

6 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Air Force (Derrick C. Goode)

55 th Signal Company (Jory C. Randall)

From the Editor

Stryker Brigade Combat
Team loading into Stryker
vehicle in Mosul, Iraq,
Operation Iraqi Freedom

A t Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in
Washington, DC,
I recently met a re-
markable Army Soldier. A young
troop sitting near me noticed my
Air Force uniform and wings. He
asked, "Sir, what kind of pilot
are you?" At the Officer's Club,
I might have said, "the best" (or
something equally brilliant and
punch worthy). But he was genu-
inely interested, and we talked a bit about military
aviation. I wanted to hear about his experiences,
so I steered the conversation to why he was visit-
ing the hospital.

The Soldier had returned from battle over
a year ago, after he was injured in combat and
spent about a year in rehabilitation. Unfortu-
nately, his wounded leg caused him tremendous
pain. At 20 years old he faced potential medical
retirement with little prospect of regaining much
use of his damaged limb.

So what does this have to do with the prin-
cipal topic of this issue of Joint Force Quarterly,
transformation during war? Undaunted, this Sol-
dier has chosen a courageous route, one only
recently viable. After consultation with his doctors
and thoughtful consideration of his options, he
requested to have his leg removed — so he could
get back to work! Refusing to be deterred by his
wound, he not only wanted to return to his job in
the Army, but he also hoped to become an Army
aviator. Amazingly, based on the transformation
of America's military, I think he could have a shot.

This Soldier's decision is a perfect metaphor
for transformation, and it exemplifies the com-
mitment, culture of selflessness, and sophistica-
tion of those serving in the Armed Forces.

He is also emblematic of the transformation
that the Chairman describes in his message and
our contributing authors explore in this issue:
New thinking, new technology, and new partners
create new ways of providing for the common
defense. This Soldier wasn't simply a casualty; he
is an experienced combat veteran, and his leaders
recognize both his sacrifice and his continuing
value to the Nation, the mission, and the Army.

By providence or destiny, we find ourselves
in a time when free men and women, even those
who have suffered grievous injuries and other
sacrifices and privations, can look beyond impair-
ments and continue to devote their efforts to
sustain and cultivate liberty. Leaders and follow-
ers alike understand that the secret to successful
transformation lies not in the newest rifle, satel-
lite, or ship. Those are helpful tools, but they are
still simply tools. As the 2005 National Defense
Strategy, Chairman, and Secretary of Defense have
stated, America and like-minded nations are in-
tegrating and blending the instruments of na-
tional power in new and potentially useful ways.
Transformation is thus a growing process — one
of realization, assessment, and reassessment, and
ultimately, its unlimited potential resides in the
hearts and brains of the men and women who
defend the Nation and its allies.

COLONEL MERRICK E. KRAUSE, USAF
jfql@ndu.edu

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 7

55 th Signal Company (Jory C. Randall)

From the Editor

Stryker Brigade Combat
Team loading into Stryker
vehicle in Mosul, Iraq,
Operation Iraqi Freedom

This Soldier's decision is a perfect metaphor
for transformation, and it exemplifies the com-
mitment, culture of selflessness, and sophistica-
tion of those serving in the Armed Forces.

COLONEL MERRICK E. KRAUSE, USAF
jfql@ndu.edu

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 7

Forum

A merica and its allies face
a threat as great as any in
the Nation's history. The
danger posed by extrem-
ists, particularly terrorists armed with
weapons of mass effects, spans borders
and threatens the stability and eco-
nomic prosperity of free states across
the globe. This fourth year after the
9/11 attacks against citizens, civilians,
and allies finds America still in recov-
ery and engaged in a war on terror and
a global economy slowly stabilizing.

Although individual memories
may be short, the return to normalcy
is not complete. We are recalibrating
to find a new definition of normal.
The world has changed: we live with
color-coded alerts, anthrax scares, and
not-so-friendly skies. Lest we become
accustomed to this state of affairs, we
must remember that the war is not over
and liberty remains threatened. With
enough commitment, resolve, and co-
operation, those who embrace fear over
freedom can again be overcome. But we

will not win by guns and guts alone. In-
deed, all freedom-loving nations, using
their combined instruments of national
power, will be required to establish and
maintain a lasting peace. Unfortunately,
those are a lot of moving parts to syn-
chronize, so the challenge is vast.

On December 17, 2004, the Presi-
dent of the United States signed the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Support Act. This was a major change
to America's traditional security sys-
tem, and it demonstrated a recogni-

8 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

tion and willingness to act and move
beyond legacy arrangements of gov-
ernment into new and more effective
relationships. Before signing the bill,
President Bush said:

Nearly six decades ago, our nation and our
allies faced a new threat — the new world
of the Cold War and the dangers of a new
enemy. To defend the free world from an
armed empire bent on conquest, visionary
leaders created new institutions such as the
NATO Alliance. The NATO Alliance was

begun by treaty in this very room. Presi-
dent Truman also implemented a sweeping
reorganization of the Federal Government.
He established the Department of Defense,
the Central Intelligence Agency, and the
National Security Council.

America, in this new century, again faces
new threats. Instead of massed armies,
we face stateless networks; we face killers
who hide in our own cities. We must con-
front deadly technologies. To inflict great
harm on our country, America's enemies
need to be only right once. Our intelli-
gence and law enforcement professionals
in our government must be right every
single time. Our government is adapting
to confront and defeat these threats. We're
staying on the offensive against the enemy.
We'll take the fight to the terrorists abroad
so we do not have to face them here
at home.

The new National Defense Strategy
for the United States describes in more
detail the Department of Defense ap-
proach to modern security threats and
the war on terror. The March 2005
document presents five strategic objec-
tives: securing the United States from
direct attack, securing strategic access,
retaining global freedom of action,
strengthening alliances and partner-
ships, and establishing favorable secu-
rity conditions.

Are these merely organizational
changes, or is this strategy transforma-
tional? Many contend that transforma-
tion of America's military is resident
in a set of capabilities, an extension of
former debates about the decades-old
Soviet theory of military technological
revolutions and American revolution
in military affairs programs popular
in the 1990s. But, as the Chairman of
the Joint Chiefs has said, transforma-
tion is not just about technology and
platforms — "transformation takes place
between the ears." The cultural and
intellectual factors of transformation
are more important than new ships,
planes, and high-tech weapons.

In past issues of /FQ, General Rich-
ard Myers described the transformation

of America's military, and the militaries
of our allies, in three parts: technologi-
cal, intellectual, and cultural. Battling
extremists the last several years has
helped create new operational strategies
shaped by innovation. This is why Joint
Forces Command and forward thinkers
in the services have recently moved be-
yond dogma and challenged old doctri-
nal approaches that may be less useful
in today's strategic environment.

The military is adapting and suc-
ceeding, capturing lessons learned and
changing the Cold War status quo. As
the next Quadrennial Defense Review
approaches, military and civilian de-
fense professionals will debate trans-
formation in a context of acquisitions,
new systems, and evolving visions.
Clearly, America's military is moving
from a legacy, post-Cold War contain-
ment force to something new. But new
technology, although necessary, is not
sufficient to ensure international stabil-
ity and prosperity. Recent successes in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in
the war on terror have proven that the
military instrument of power cannot
succeed in the long term if used inde-
pendently. In fact, transformation dur-
ing this war on terror has demonstrated
that new partners — agencies, allies, in-
dustry, nongovernmental organizations,
and the private sector — must together
provide a front that blends all the tools
of national power to defeat modern,
transnational threats. Joint operations
are the baseline; integrated operations
with these new partners are the future.

This // Q forum poses a variety of
researched opinions on transformation
of the military — and transformation
of security strategy. Some essays pro-
mote conventional visions and some
are more controversial. With these es-
says, fFQ hopes to encourage debate
and engage further dialogue — among
services, agencies, nations, industry,
nongovernmental organizations, and
private sector partners. JFQ m.e, Krause

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 9

Forum

If language is not correct, then what is said is not meant; if what is said is not what is meant,
then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate;
if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no
arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.

— Confucius

Defining Integrated
Operations

By RICHARD D. DOWNIE

C onfucius emphasizes that
the lack of clear language
causes confusion and possi-
bly disastrous consequences.
As military, interagency, and multi-
national operations become more

complex and integrated, we need to
say what we mean. In this vein, the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen-
eral Richard Myers, USAF, has taken an
important step to clarify some terms,
although this article argues that more

steps are necessary. General Myers has
noted that we operate on nonmilitary
and cross-border fronts, involving law
enforcement, diplomacy, and finance,
and we need to "transform our mili-
tary competencies from joint opera-
tions to integrated operations [emphasis
added]." 1 He also mentions the require-
ment for standardization across the
joint force to maximize effectiveness.
One of the first — and easiest — things
we can standardize is the terminology
we use to define important, though
perhaps amorphous, operational con-
cepts. In the past, we have loosely de-
fined what are considered interagency
operations. But what are integrated
operations — and for that matter, what
are interagency operations? Distinctions
matter as we more frequently conduct
operations that include counterparts

Colonel Richard D. Downie, USA (Ret.), is Director of the Center for Hemispheric
Defense Studies. He served as the first commandant of the Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation and is the author of Learning from Conflict: The
U.5. Military in Vietnam, El Salvador, and the Drug War.

lO JFQ / issue thirty-eight

1 st Combat Camera Squadron (Cherie A. Thurlby)

D o w n i e

from U.S. Government and nongovern-
ment agencies, private industry, and,
perhaps more importantly, partners
from allied countries and international
organizations.

Toward the Chairman's goal of
standardization, this commentary of-
fers a taxonomy of terms to describe
various types of interagency and inte-
grated operations. The intent is to gen-
erate discussion on how to standardize
the way we define and address such

operations. The faculty of the Center
for Hemispheric Defense Studies at the
National Defense University developed
the terms. We based our approach on
differentiation and categorization of
the entities participating rather than
on the functional objective of an op-
eration (such as peacekeeping, disaster
relief, or counterterrorism).

Taxonomy of Terms

Joint operations, combined opera-
tions. The explanations of the taxon-
omy start with basic terms on which
most agree, then proceed to more
contentious ones. Most members of
the defense and security community
routinely recognize and use the terms
joint and combined. The Department
of Defense (DOD), in its Dictionary of
Military and Associated Terms, defines
joint operations as military actions con-
ducted by joint forces or by service
forces working together. The definition
implies actions by the military forces
of a single country. For instance, Op-
eration Just Cause in Panama in 1989
was a joint operation that involved
the elements of the Army, Navy, Air
Force, and Marines in a coordinated
effort. The DOD dictionary refers to
combined operations as those conducted

Commander of Combined Support Force 526,
working with international militaries and
nongovernmental organizations, briefing Special
Coordinator for the Secretary General for Tsunami
Relief, United Nations, January 20, 2005

by military forces of two or more al-
lied nations acting together for the
accomplishment of a single mission.
Operation Desert Storm in 1991, de-
signed to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait,
was considered a combined operation,
as it involved a coalition of forces from
the United States, Europe, the Middle
East, and other regions.

Interagency operations. The lack of
precision starts with the use of the term
interagency operations, which I contend
serves as an umbrella over various
types of operations that should be
defined separately. The term inter-
agency operations evokes opera-
tions involving a variety of agen-
cies; without further explanation, one
might assume he understands the type
of participants or agencies involved.
Indeed, two individuals could conduct
a discussion with very different im-
pressions. What the specific operation
includes or does not include is unclear.
The receiver must ask additional ques-
tions. The divergence between what
each speaker is saying may not be
pronounced if they are from the same
service or even represent two services
working on the same staff. However,
when a military official talks with his
counterpart from the Departments of

State or Justice, there is great potential
for misperception. That potential in-
creases dramatically when one speaks
with an international counterpart.

Federal interagency operations.
A military colleague recently responded
to my assertion that interagency opera-
tions is a vague term by declaring that
joint staff officers have a common
understanding of the expression and
routinely use it. Without missing a
beat, he defined interagency operations
as those involving two or more U.S.
Federal agencies — a worthy response.
Clearly, an interagency operation can
involve only Federal agencies. Take the
example of a counterdrug operation
to interdict a suspected narcotrafficker
boat moving through Caribbean waters
toward the U.S. coastline. An Air Force
airborne warning and control system or
Navy P-3 aircraft may identify a suspi-
cious boat and pass the information to
the Joint Interagency Task Force South
(JIATF-S) Operations Center. U.S. Cus-
toms, the Department of Justice, and
other Federal agencies manning the
operations center may direct a Coast
Guard or Navy vessel to intercept the
boat. If drugs are found, Coast Guard or
Federal law enforcement officers seize
them and apprehend the traffickers.

one of the first things we can
standardize is the terminology we
use to define operational concepts

issue thirty-eight / JFQ *11

1 * Combat Camera Squadron (Aaron Allmon II)

Forum

■ defining intergrated operations

threats and activities. So how does one
distinguish between those operations
that involve only Federal agencies and
those involving state and local authori-
ties as well? Our taxonomy describes
operations including entities at the
Federal, state, and local levels as domes-
tic interagency operations . 3

Integrated operations. Recognizing
the need to bring greater precision to
how we describe various operations,
General Myers coined the term inte-
grated operations. After introducing the
term enhanced jointness, he later de-
fined integrated operations to high-
light the participation of entities other
than military forces:

The term joint once referred to multi-
ple services working together. That is the
baseline. Many services, Federal agencies,
allies and their governmental agencies,
corporations, and nongovernmental or-
ganizations must cooperate to meet the
full spectrum of military operations, from
peacekeeping to battle to the transition to
a lasting peace. 4

This distinction is useful. Never-
theless, the question becomes when
and how interagency operations evolve
into integrated operations. That is,
where do integrated operations begin
and interagency operations stop? An
obvious divide is between operations
involving one country and those in-
volving more than one.

National integrated operations.
While General Myers' strict defini-
tion of integrated operations focuses
on multinational operations, we also
need to distinguish and describe op-
erations that involve many disparate
participants within the confines of
one country. The relief effort follow-
ing Hurricane Andrew in Florida in
1992 involved Federal, state, and local
emergency management and law en-
forcement entities, the military, the
Coast Guard, and nongovernmental
organizations such as the Red Cross,
not to mention private businesses and
churches across the country. To distin-
guish between integrated operations

Such interagency operations are con-
ducted frequently at JIATF-S, a true
interagency task force located in Key
West, Florida, and commanded by a
Coast Guard admiral — as well as many

other places every day. Within my col-
league's definition, interagency opera-
tions can either include the military or
not. For clarification, the taxonomy
in the table refers to such operations,

involving only U.S. Government agen-
cies, as Federal interagency operations.

Domestic interagency operations.
However, others call operations that
include state and local authorities as
well as Federal entities inter-
agency operations. For example,
there are 16 joint terrorism task
forces across the United States
that link the efforts and intel-
ligence available to the military and
to Federal, state, and local law enforce-
ment departments. 2 The intent is to
permit these task forces to prevent, or
respond more effectively to, terrorist

there are 16 joint terrorism task
forces across the United States
that link efforts and intelligence

Salvadoran soldiers marking their participation
in the Multi-National Division Center-South
at Al Hillah, Iraq, Operation Iraqi Freedom.

12 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Coast Guard (Tony Russell)

D o w n i e

within one nation and those involving
multiple countries, our taxonomy sets
national integrated operations apart from
multinational integrated operations.

Combined integrated operations.
Some in the defense and security com-
munity use joint, interagency, multina-
tional to describe a type of operation
that also fits in the integrated operation
category. This variant involves multiple
military services and government-level

entities from more than one sovereign
country — but no nongovernmental
entities. An example would be Mili-
tary Observer Mission, Ecuador-Peru.
This multinational peacekeeping effort
helped resolve a border conflict that
erupted between Ecuador and Peru in
1995. Representatives of military forces
and of foreign affairs and defense min-
istries from Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
and the United States monitored and
coordinated this groundbreaking ac-
complishment. While our taxonomy

could have used the phrase joint, inter-
agency, multinational for the sake of con-
sistency — to identify clearly this variant
as an integrated operation — we selected
the term combined integrated operation.

Multinational integrated operations.
General Myers' definition of integrated
operations actually refers to a multina-
tional operation. A prime example is
the international relief effort respond-
ing to the tsunami in Southeast Asia in
late 2004. This initiative
included military forces
and governmental agen-
cies from many nations;
nongovernmental agencies
such as the International Red Cross,
OXFAM, and CARE; international
governmental organizations (IGOs),
including the United Nations; and pri-
vate industry partners who donated aid
and relief supplies. The postwar recon-
struction in Iraq, also called a stability
and support operation, falls into this cat-
egory. In addition to the militaries of
many coalition countries accomplish-
ing a variety of tasks, governmental
agencies such as the U.S. Departments
of State, Justice, and Defense work
with their Iraqi counterparts
at the national, regional, and
municipal levels. IGOs such as
the United Nations are involved
in election assistance, while
many multinational companies
take on tasks ranging from fix-
ing oil field machinery to con-
structing and repairing build-
ings, roads, power grids, and
other infrastructure projects.
In short, our taxonomy labels
what General Myers calls an in-
tegrated operation as a multina-
tional integrated operation.

Returning to the opening
quotation, Confucius exhorts us
to avoid arbitrary statements.
In that spirit, and with Gen-
eral Myers' effort to achieve
standardization in mind, this
commentary seeks to provoke
debate on how to describe more
accurately and efficiently today's

governmental agencies work with
their Iraqi counterparts at the national,
regional, and municipal levels

nontraditional operations. While we
have tried to capture the variety of in-
teragency and integrated operations
based on the participants involved,
there are other ways to approach such
a categorization. Moreover, there will
be disagreement on terms. Some may
question whether a separate category is
warranted if one or more participants
listed in a type of operation is missing. 5
Such issues and the discussions they
generate will help bring greater preci-
sion to how the defense and security
community understands and discusses
interagency and integrated operations.
As the Chairman's term integrated opera-
tions reflects the growing participation
of disparate national and international
entities, achieving clarity is increas-
ingly important to building greater un-
derstanding, unity, and interoperability
with interagency, nongovernmental,
and foreign counterparts. JFQ

NOTES

1 Richard B. Myers, "A Word from
the Chairman," Joint Force Quarterly, no. 37
(April 2005), 5.

2 Note that the use of joint in this
example of joint terrorism task forces
is not consistent with the military
usage, which again highlights the
requirement for standardization across all
participants.

3 Although the Intergovernmental
Personnel Act uses intergovernmental opera-
tions to describe activities involving govern-
ments at the Federal, state, and local levels,
this phrase fails to distinguish varieties of
domestic municipal, state, regional, and
provincial governments from sovereign na-
tional governments.

4 Richard B. Myers, "A Word from
the Chairman," Joint Force Quarterly, no. 36
(January 2005), 10.

5 In other words, does the fact that a
nongovernmental or an international gov-
ernmental organization does not participate
mean that the activity is not a multinational
integrated operation?

The Center for Hemispheric Studies
is located at the National Defense
University and is one of five DOD
regional centers.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 13

Forum

How Joint Are
We and Can
We Be Better?

By CHUCK HARRISON

T he U.S. military does not
have a system in place to
institutionalize, direct, or
even require regular joint
tactical training. When I discuss this
deficiency with senior military officers

Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Harrison,
USA, is assigned to U.S. Special
Operations Command.

and civilian analysts, they point to
the Goldwater-Nichols Act as testa-
ment to our jointness. We believe that
the Goldwater-Nichols Act cured most
of our ills and pronounced it good
enough. But it is not good enough,
and there is ample evidence. We need
to develop a management system to
ensure effective training at the joint
tactical level.

Because of the nature of its mis-
sion, the Army depends on the other
services for help. It relies on the Air
Force or Navy for close air support from
their fixed-wing bombers, supplies,
weapons, and for movement to a com-
bat zone. It depends on the Air Force for
command and control, strategic attack,
and interdiction as well as such forms
of intelligence as the Joint Surveillance
and Target Attack Radar System.

The other services depend on
the Army to provide security around
airfields and ports and along ground
routes. But by and large, these are
missions that the Army prepares for
during internal training. The tactics,
techniques, and procedures for these
operations do not change when work-
ing with other services and do not re-
quire training with them. The special
operations community does conduct
considerable joint tactical training and
has a system that ensures that it takes
place. Since the Army is the service
most dependent on the other services,

14 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

USS Harry S. Truman (Kristopher Wilson)

Harrison

this article focuses on joint training
involving the Army, but the lessons
apply to the entire joint community.

It is important that we define
tactical training to ensure that the de-
bate does not become entangled with
the Goldwater-Nichols Act, which ad-
dressed strategic issues and joint opera-
tional level training. Joint Publication
1-02, Department of Defense Dictionary
of Military Terms, defines the tactical
level of warfare as:

The level of war at which battles and
engagements are planned and executed to
accomplish military objectives assigned
to tactical units or task forces. Activities
at this level focus on the ordered arrange-
ment and maneuver of combat elements in
relation to each other and to the enemy to
achieve combat objectives.

The operational level of war is
defined as:

The level of war at which campaigns
and major operations are planned, con-
ducted, and sustained to accomplish stra-
tegic objectives within theaters or other
operational areas. Activities at this level
link tactics and strategy by establishing
operational objectives needed to accom-

plish the strategic objectives, sequencing
events to achieve the operational objec-
tives, initiating actions, and applying re-
sources to bring about and sustain these
events. These activities imply a broader di-
mension of time or space than do tactics;
they ensure the logistic and administrative
support of tactical forces, and provide the
means by which tactical successes are ex-
ploited to achieve strategic objectives.

The tactical level of war, for the
Army at least, is that of the division
and below but will increasingly be-
come that of the brigade and below.
Therefore, it is increasingly important
to conduct joint tactical training for

the Army brigade, or what the Army
will refer to as the unit of action.

How Joint Are We?

Recent combat experiences sug-
gest that we are fighting as an inte-
grated joint team. However, integra-
tion problems remain. Major General
Frank Hagenbeck, USA, Commander,
10 th Infantry Division, started an in-
terservice debate over his contention
that close air support (CAS) was unre-
sponsive during Operation Anaconda
in Afghanistan. 1 Joint coordination,
and explicitly joint fires coordination,
seemed to improve during Operation
Iraqi Freedom, although command,
control, communications, and intel-
ligence (C 3 I) digital systems are still
incompatible among the joint forces.
The timeliness of CAS did not seem to
be a widespread problem during Iraqi
Freedom, but there are concerns due
to lack of tactical training and under-
standing of the capabilities of the CAS
pilots from the Army perspective and
the capabilities of ground forces from
the perspective of CAS pilots.

The 3 d Infantry Division's after-ac-
tion report from Iraqi Freedom has posi-
tive things to say about the availabil-
ity of CAS during its rapid advance to
Baghdad. The report specifi-
cally gives accolades for the
enlisted tactical air control-
lers assigned to the brigade
combat teams. However, the
controllers experienced problems in
talking pilots onto the targets, delaying
CAS in a counterfire role against Iraqi
artillery. This was reportedly due to the
inability of the pilots to identify the
targets and a misunderstanding with
ground forces on what constituted pos-
itive identification of targets as enemy.
While the ground forces were satisfied
with their counterfire radar acquisi-
tions as a positive identification, the
special instructions (SPINS) for the pi-
lots did not authorize engagements
based on acquisitions alone. On the
surface, this appears to be a rules-of-en-
gagement problem and should be ad-
dressed accordingly. But if the ground

forces had trained more with live pi-
lots prior to the war, they would have
known that SPINS normally requires
a CAS pilot or observer to positively
identify targets. Additionally, the situa-
tion in Iraq was skewed by the fact that
the fixed-wing aircraft were nearly all
rigged for bombing rather than coun-
terair. This is important because in a
conflict with a country with fighter jets,
many of our fixed-wing assets would
conduct counterair operations rather
than bombing. Therefore, it is impera-
tive that each CAS aircraft is used ef-
ficiently and effectively.

The Goldwater-Nichols Act of
1986 is widely praised as having re-
formed the Department of Defense
(DOD) and contributed to making the
U.S. military the most powerful ever
assembled. Today's capabilities to plan
and operate at the strategic level are
unequaled. Prior to the legislation, of-
ficers often avoided joint duty, pre-
ferring to stay within their services.
Goldwater-Nichols forced the services
to send some of their best personnel to
joint billets by setting an objective that
joint officers would be promoted at the
same or higher rates than officers not
joint qualified. Additionally, the law
created critical joint billets that had to
be filled by the services. As a final in-
centive, the law made it mandatory for
all officers to be joint qualified prior
to flag rank. Many believe that the
law has changed the military culture.
However, the cultural change is only
now filtering down to the operational
level. It is imperative to ensure that it
continues to the tactical level.

There are ongoing efforts by U.S.
Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) to cre-
ate a Joint National Training Capa-
bility (JNTC). These initiatives show
great promise in bringing joint forces
together in the live, virtual, and con-
structive environments to train at the
operational level. The Deputy Secre-
tary of Defense formally established
the joint national training concept
in January 2003 and made JFCOM
responsible for the initiative. JNTC
is envisioned as linking the tactical,

joint coordination, and explicitly joint
fires coordination, seemed to improve
during Operation Iraqi Freedom

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 15

Forum

■ how joint are we?

operational, and strategic players in a
single exercise to increase joint effec-
tiveness. Although the approach shows
promise, little has been accomplished
in bringing the joint players together
at the operational and tactical level.

An operational-level exercise was
recently conducted by III Corps head-
quarters, acting as the coalition joint
task force (CJTF) headquarters. CJTF
commanded and controlled forces
from Arizona to Texas in live, virtual,
and constructive environments and

declared the exercise successful. The
III Corps Commander wrote an article
arguing that the exercise validated
the joint training concept. 2 Although
we should applaud the efforts of all
involved to execute and validate this
difficult and overdue training event,
we should ask just how joint the exer-
cise was and at what level. The table in
the article showed the training audi-
ence for the exercise, but conspicu-
ously missing was any participation
from services other than the Army.

Potential participants are listed in the
table below, with their involvement
annotated.

Was this joint training? As the
author pointed out, this was a test to
validate the JNTC concept, but it seems
implausible to validate a joint training
system when the full joint team is not
participating. Even if the joint forces air
component commander or the Com-
bined Air Operations Center took part,
there was no tactical participation of
CAS or reconnaissance aircraft.

Looking for Opportunities

f Discussions with numerous former
2 and serving battalion and brigade com-
| manders and former combat training
e center (CTC) observer/controllers indi-
£ cate that joint tactical training is simply
5 not happening often enough. Where it
does occur, it takes place mainly through
a valiant effort, mostly by an individual
Army staff officer or Air Force air liaison
officer (ALO), who must persuade other
joint forces to become involved. The
following are just a few examples from
my own experiences serving in both the
United States and the Republic of Korea.

The 6 th Cavalry Brigade (Air Com-
bat) is U.S. Forces Korea's reserve in the
event of conflict on the Korean Penin-
sula. It consists of two Aff-64 Apache
helicopter squadrons and a Patriot air
defense battalion. Plans call for ele-
ments of the brigade to work with the
Navy during the early stages of a po-
tential conflict. The brigade conducts
over-water training for this eventual-
ity both with the Navy and indepen-
dently. Because no other Apache unit
in the Army has a similar mission, new
crews must learn the particular tac-
tics, techniques, and procedures. Train-
ing with the Navy is key to executing
the operation, ffowever, there is no
mechanism to ensure that this training
takes place other than the good rela-
tions between 6 th Cavalry and the fleet.
There is no command above either of
the organizations responsible for plan-
ning and resourcing joint training. The
result is that scheduled joint training is
sometimes cancelled due to changes in

Potential Participants

Element

ParticiDation

Joint Force Air Component Command

None

Combined Air Operations Center
and Battlefield Coordination Detachment

Fixed Cost Contracting

Air Force/Navy/Marine Corps fixed wing attack

None

Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD)

None

Lethal and nonlethal SEAD

None

Joint Airborne Command Center/
Command Post

None

Airborne Warning and Control System

None

Joint Surveillance and Target Attack
Radar System

(Simulation Only)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

(Simulation)

Combat Search and Rescue

None

Source: Thomas F. Metz and Christopher A. Joslin, "Time to Train How We Fight:
Validation of the Joint Training Concept,” Army Aviation (December 31 , 2003).

16 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Harrison

the operational calendar for one or the
other commands with little regard for
the priority of joint tactical training.

When I served as a squadron com-
mander in 6 th Cavalry Brigade, my staff
searched for opportunities to train in
a joint environment, especially in live
fire conditions. Since we had a low
priority on live fire ranges in Korea,
we turned to the Air Force 25 th Fighter
Squadron (A-lOs) to conduct training.
This proved to be a beneficial oppor-
tunity for both organizations because
they had access to a range, and both

received excellent joint air attack team
training while over water. Although
this worked occasionally, we should
not depend on tactical-level command-
ers to find joint training opportunities
as the only alternative.

The 2 d Infantry Division is the Ar-
my's forward-deployed ground force in
the Republic of Korea. The division ex-
ecutes quarterly brigade-level exercises
to keep its edge honed for combat. My
squadron participated in the training
because the division's Apache unit was
undergoing training back in the States
as a Longbow battalion. The division
had issued an operations order to the
brigade that was conducting the train-
ing, and the brigade had completed its
analysis and was issuing its operations
order to the subordinate command-
ers and to the division commander.
Unfortunately, the exercise had to be
conducted with no CAS and critical
training was lost.

An observer not familiar with the
Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC)
would probably think it is operated by
a joint organization with full support
of the joint team. Actually, the Army
operates the center and depends on
agreements with the other services,
particularly the Air Force, for their par-
ticipation in the training. The JRTC
staff is constantly working to line up
CAS sorties and lift aircraft to ensure

that brigades rotating through the cen-
ter receive the best joint tactical train-
ing possible. But when CAS and lift
aircraft are cancelled, the brigades are
relegated to "replication," the bane of
serious trainers everywhere. The fix is
again an agreement between the ser-
vices since JFCOM does not command
combat forces in either the Army or
the Air Force.

Finally, despite years of increased
focus, with talking and more talk-
ing on joint operations by Congress,
DOD, and military commanders at all
levels, the General Accounting
Office (GAO) issued a critical re-
port on joint CAS training. 3 CAS
for ground forces is a hot issue
when joint tactical operations are
discussed, but problems remain. The
report specifically notes that the De-
partment of Defense has had limited
success in overcoming the barriers that
prevent troops from receiving the re-
alistic, standardized close air support
training necessary to prepare them for
joint operations. This is the result of
four interrelated factors:

■ ground and air forces have limited
opportunities to train together in a joint
environment

■ home station training is often re-
stricted and thus does not always provide
realistic training to prepare troops to per-
form the mission

■ the services use different training
standards and certification requirements for
personnel responsible for coordinating close
air support

■ within the individual services, joint
close air support training is often a lower
priority than other missions.

The report goes on to say that
when CAS training for ground forces
does occur, usually at one of the com-
bat training centers, it does not meet
the requirements of the ground com-
manders because units are not ade-
quately trained prior to their arrival
at the center. Additionally, the CTCs
are the only maneuver training areas
that offer adequate range areas to con-
duct realistic training, but individual
brigades only get to train at the CTCs
every 12 to 18 months. As the senior

we should not depend on tactical-
level commanders to find joint
training opportunities

aviation observer controller at JRTC in
2002-2003, I came to the same conclu-
sions. Units conducted the training
they needed prior to their arrival at
the CTCs rather than executing profi-
ciently on arrival. Reports from Army
CTCs and the Center for Army Lessons
Learned confirm that ground forces
need to conduct more CAS training.

The Joint National Training Ca-
pability concept attempts to fix the
training center problem by integrating
the entire joint force. But brigade or
battalion commanders will likely be
involved less often than is currently
the practice at the "dirt" CTCs such as
JRTC and the National Training Center.

Why We Must Train Jointly

The issue of joint training is im-
portant for the Army because the ser-
vice is truly dependent on the other
services for specific capabilities that
do not exist in its inventory, especially
CAS and airlift. Army and joint doc-
trine call for the close integration of
ground and air components in execut-
ing tactical operations. A major prob-
lem, however, is that the individual
services are responsible for training
and equipping their combat units.
Title 10, U.S. Code, defines the Army's

Members of air support operations squadron call
in close air support during combat operations in
Faliujah, November 13, 2004

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 17

Forum

■ how joint are we?

responsibility to organize, train, and
equip forces primarily for ground com-
bat. 4 Within the continental United
States, the senior conventional Army
commander is Commander, U.S. Army
Forces Command, and he is respon-
sible for training the forces within his
command. Each overseas unit is led
by a senior Army commander in the
region, such as the 8 th Army Com-
mander in South Korea. The regional
combatant commanders, such as U.S.
Central Command's, have responsi-
bility for war planning and fighting

but no tasking authority to individual
service organizations for training. Any
joint training is accomplished by coop-
eration among individual commanders
rather than any higher commander
having the authority to direct joint
training across the services. Some argue
that this arrangement is acceptable and
the military does not need another

training directive issued by a head-
quarters not in touch with the units
affected. But the consequences of not
conducting joint tactical training are
potentially catastrophic.

The one command that has au-
thority for directing and resourcing
joint training is U.S. Special Opera-
tions Command. Joint training within
the command is fairly routine since
forces from all the services fall under
one commander. Air support and
operations for ground and maritime
forces are coordinated and directed
by the higher joint
headquarters and
are only subject
to change by that
headquarters. How-
ever, because the
command lacks CAS
fixed-wing aircraft, close air support
remains a problem within the com-
munity; at least two incidents of
friendly fire occurred in Afghani-
stan against Special Forces troops by
CAS aircraft.

The GAO report cited earlier
points out that there are no standards
across the services for close air support

the regional combatant commanders have
responsibility for war planning and fighting
but no tasking authority to individual
service organizations for training

training or for how often controllers
must train to the task. Air Force CAS
controllers assigned to Army brigades
and battalions are there only tempo-
rarily and are subject to the orders of
their Air Force parent unit and may
not be available for training with Army
forces. 5 This issue becomes of even
more concern as the Army transitions
to units of action that are roughly
equivalent to our current brigades, or
more accurately to the brigade combat
team that is formed from the standing
maneuver brigade (infantry or armor)
with all its support forces from other
brigades within a division. Over the
last decade, Army deployments have
involved smaller and smaller units to
the point that we are now putting bat-
talion task forces and brigade combat
teams on deployments that used to
involve at least a division level com-
mander and staff. Lower level com-
manders must therefore deal with in-
creasingly complex issues. What has
not been created is a system to ensure
that joint training is taking place at the
brigade and battalion level. Not only
will joint tactical training become even
more important, but also command-
ers at lower levels must become more
adept at joint operations at the opera-
tional as well as the tactical level.

Joint Interdependence

There is much discussion about
joint interdependence within the De-
partment of Defense and specifically
the Army. The argument is that we
achieved the ability to deconflict joint
operations sometime in the 1990s and
moved on not only to deconflict but
also to integrate joint operations in
Iraqi Freedom. The argument, as ar-
ticulated in The Army Strategic Plan-
ning Guidance, goes further to say that
now, in order to reduce redundancies
and gain efficiencies, we must become
interdependent. That is, each service
must depend on the other services for
certain tasks so the entire force can
function at the lowest cost. Given the
Army's decision to reduce organic fire
support assets in lieu of more ground

18 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Harrison

forces, dependence on CAS is increas-
ingly an issue. The bottom line is that
support from the other services is nec-
essary for Army success in current and
future combat.

There are several options for im-
proving joint tactical training ranging
from redesigning the entire Depart-
ment of Defense as "purple suiters” to
maintaining the status quo. One is to
align all tactical Army, Navy, Marine,
and Air Force combat elements for
training with each other based on a re-

gional alignment under the combatant
commanders of the unified commands.
Combatant commanders would direct
multi-echelon joint training and issue
training development guidance to the
service commands. Commanders of
each of the aligned service component
commands would then develop, re-
source, coordinate, and execute multi-
echelon joint training. This method
fits well with the new Army doctrine of
a capabilities-based force that is ready
to deploy, rapidly plug into a joint task
force, and win the fight.

Another option is to charge the
JFCOM commander with synchronizing
assets to ensure that joint tactical train-
ing is taking place. A quarterly joint

training conference could take place
similar to the current joint airborne/air
transportability training conferences
in which aircraft are resourced for
parachute and transport training and
operations. This system has enabled
the Army to achieve mission success
in maintaining parachute proficiency
for an entire division of paratroopers
and other conventional and Special
Operations Forces (SOF). It has also
worked for scheduling lift aircraft. The
most logical extension of this confer-
ence would be adding close air
support aircraft coordination.
Additional players in the joint
coordination arena are Navy
carriers for joint shipboard operations
and naval surface gunfire. The subse-
quent close interaction of the entire
joint team would inevitably bring up
other training opportunities that would
benefit all the services and further re-
duce redundancies across the board.

Prior to any of these options, the
services must identify key joint tasks
that offer high-payoff training. Obvi-
ously, CAS is one of those areas. The
services should establish joint stan-
dards for aircrews, controllers, com-
panies, battalions, and brigades that
require training in key joint tasks.
Next, enlisted tactical air controllers
and ALOs should be assigned directly
to the command they support.

Due to the changing operating en-
vironment, it is becoming more criti-
cal that all forces are able to operate
together, including SOF. As a corollary,
all SOF troops should be included in
training conferences to better enable
conventional forces to schedule train-
ing with them.

Electronic training sensors for
ground and air combat forces are an-
other key aspect of enticing units to
„ train jointly. The Navy and Air Force are
| correctly concerned that aircraft train-
2 ing involve the replication of enemy air
| defenses, and both have built sophisti-
| cated training areas for their crews. The

| Army has sophisticated ground force

training systems at their CTCs and in-
creasingly at home bases, especially in
the urban training environment. No-
where in the military do we have both
systems tied together to totally enable
joint tactical training and hold com-
manders accountable. Decisionmakers
should review all planned and current
electronic training systems.

Warriors should not have to figure
out how to fight jointly under fire. It
is not that we are not training in the
Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air
Force; we just do not do it together
well enough. We are executing together
in combat, so let us not waste the les-
sons from the last several years of com-
bat by failing to incorporate them into
a truly joint training system. JFQ

NOTES

1 Franklin L. Hagenbeck, "Afghanistan:
Fire Support for Operation Anaconda," Field
Artillery Journal (September-October 2002),
5-9.

2 Thomas F. Metz and Christopher A.
Joslin, "Time to Train How We Fight: Vali-
dation of the Joint Training Concept," Army
Aviation (December 31, 2003), 51-54.

3 U.S. General Accounting Office,
"Military Readiness: Lingering Training and
Equipment Issues Hamper Air Support of
Ground Forces," GAO-03-505, May 2003.

4 Title 10, U.S. Code, subtitle B, part 1,
chapter 307, section 3062.

5 GAO-03-505, 9.

the services must identify key joint
tasks that offer high-payoff training

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 19

Forum

U.S. Marine Corps (Will Lathrop)

Marine views demolition of weapons
cache in Iraq from HEV Cougar, the
Marine Corps’ newest vehicle, wrapped
in steel armor and ballistic glass

Getting Transformation Right

By RICHARD D. HOOKER, JR., H.R. McMASTER, and DAVE GREY

T oday, as never before, the
military establishment is
committed to dynamic and
revolutionary change to
produce new forms of warfare and new
warfighting capabilities. Transformation

Colonel Richard D. Hooker, Jr., USA, is Commander, XVIII Airborne Corps Combat
Support Brigade; Colonel H.R. McMaster, USA, is Commander, 3 d Cavalry Regiment,
and author of Dereliction of Duty; and Colonel Dave Gray, USA, is Commander,

1 st Brigade, 101 st Airborne Division (Air Assault).

offers an exciting vision of future war
with fewer casualties, quicker victories,
and a lower price tag. It could secure
U.S. military dominance for genera-
tions to come. But there are risks. Get-
ting transformation right is second only
to success on the battlefield as the most
important challenge facing the military.

Transformation plays to American
strengths in technology and engineer-
ing, allays the fear of casualties, assumes

20 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Hooker, McMaster, and Grey

a reduced requirement for vulnerable
ground troops, and promises short,
sharp campaigns. It does not rely as
heavily as current warfare on unco-
operative allies. Theoretically, it could
enhance deterrence through the pros-
pect of decisive, overwhelming defeat
of adversaries. There is a danger, how-
ever, in embracing the transformation
agenda entirely without addressing its
potential shortcomings.

The Power of the Microchip

What is meant by transformation ?
The Department of Defense Office of
Force Transformation defines it some-
what elliptically as "a process that
shapes the changing nature of military
competition. . . . First and foremost,

defense transformation seeks

transformation is a continuing pro-
cess. It does not have an end state." 1
While clearly an ongoing procedure,
the lack of precisely defined waypoints,
operating parameters, a bounded and
developed transformational concept
for joint operations, or disciplined pro-
grammatics means that service and
joint planners cannot easily prioritize
programs and resources to satisfy what
remains an ambiguous agenda. Many
major programs predate the advent of
force transformation by many years.
They represent not the dramatic re-
structuring of military organizations
and institutions in accordance with
transformational concepts, but the
continuation of Cold War programs
originally conceived to cope with the
Soviet threat and now repackaged as
"transformational."

In general terms, defense transfor-
mation seeks to exploit the power of
the microchip to control information.
Variously described as network-centric
or effects-based warfare, it focuses on
the use of precision-guided muni-
tions employed at standoff ranges — all
networked to the same information
grid — to defeat opponents in major

theater war and lesser contingencies.
This approach emphasizes the use
of high technology on future battle-
fields. The thrust is the exploitation
of America's edge in high technology
to achieve rapid victory with smaller
ground forces and fewer casualties. In
this construct, networked, digitized
intelligence and information systems
can give a precise and uniform picture
of the battlefield to commanders for
immediate targeting and engagement.

Force transformation had its roots
in the revolution in military affairs
debates of the 1990s and gained a new
level of interest after the 2000 Pres-
idential election. This thinking was
heavily influenced by business inno-
vations and practices that exploited
new information technologies to
achieve business efficiencies. In
many places, business strategies and
jargon have been grafted wholesale
into transformation documents,
suggesting that armed conflict and the
marketplace are somehow analogous
if not equivalent. The intent was to
apply business practices and emerging
technologies to transform the Armed
Forces from an industrial- to an infor-
mation-focused military.

Today, transformation is focused
on technology and the networked in-
formation grid. Human factors receive
far less attention. Intellectually, trans-
formation envisions an interconnected
sensor grid able to pass information
and intelligence instan-
taneously to firing plat-
forms. In theory, this
grid will provide full
situational awareness to
commanders, who can
then select and attack
the most critical and
vulnerable target sets
for maximum effect.

Information superior-
ity, enabled by systems
that can seamlessly
relay data from sensors
to shooters, thus trans-
lates into faster decision
cycles, forestalls enemy

reactions, creates more friendly op-
tions, and minimizes risks.

Beyond Theory

After several years, however, trans-
lating this general description of future
war into detailed and specific systems
and operating concepts — concrete
capabilities placed in the hands of
warfighters — has not progressed much
beyond the theoretical stage. Exactly
how, for example, a satellite image of
a high value target or a signal intercept
picked up by national technical means
would be relayed to one tactical unit
among hundreds for real-time engage-
ment remains to be seen. To date, no
joint command, control, communica-
tions, computers, intelligence, surveil-
lance, and reconnaissance system that
can interface securely and digitally
across all services and commands is
in sight. Exactly how specific systems
might fit into an overarching transfor-
mation framework remains sketchy. To
be useful to the warfighter, transforma-
tion must progress beyond broad rhe-
torical generalities to grapple with the
specific realities of future war.

A second flaw in transformation
thinking is a misconception about the
nature of war. Transformation propo-
nents insist that certainty can be ap-
proached in war. But war is grounded
in the human condition — in the hopes,
fears, pride, envy, prejudices, and
passions of human beings organized

to exploit the power of the
microchip to control information

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 21

Forum

■ getting transformation right

into political communities and mili-
tary bodies. Far more than the clash of
weapons or the neutralization of target
sets, war is a contest of wills. As much
today as yesterday, war is emotional, ir-
rational, and erratic — the antithesis of
the coldly logical and calculating view
of many transformation proponents.
War may begin for logical and rational
reasons, and leaders will strive to keep
it that way. But very quickly passions
become inflamed, populations become
resentful, regimes totter, and ambitions
expand. War aims and policy objectives
are changed, careers and administra-

tions rise and fall, allies rethink their
positions, and enemies begin to act in
unexpected ways.

Rejecting this reality, many trans-
formation supporters instead ground
their theories in the expectation of
certainty, believing that war can be
controlled, ordered, and regulated. Ex-
plicit in their discussion is the ability
not only to see the enemy everywhere,

all the time, but to actually anticipate
and predict "all opposing moves."
Full situational awareness will largely
if not completely dissipate the fog and
friction of war.

This is a dangerous and unwar-
ranted assertion. The expectation of
certainty in battle betrays a misplaced
faith in technology that is hard to
overstate; in fact, it is to misconceive
war altogether. As Frederick Kagan
pointed out, the essence of this vision
is the simple reduction of warfare to
a targeting drill. 2 In this schema, wars
and campaigns appear as lists of targets
to be located, attacked, and
destroyed. This "technicist"
view reflects the experiences
and intellectual predisposi-
tions of many transformation
advocates who come from air
and naval backgrounds. Their
briefings reveal few conceptual distinc-
tions between the levels of war. Fur-
ther, they betray a misunderstanding
of war's intensely human character, a
failure to recognize the different war-
fighting domains of land, sea, air, and
space, and a misreading of service core
competencies and their contributions
to joint warfare. Future war, like past
war, will be characterized by complex-

ity, ambiguity, and uncertainty — an
operating environment conspicuously
absent from current transformation
presentations.

Relatedly, at the core of much cur-
rent thinking about transformation lies
a desire for more politically acceptable
forms of warfare. Indeed, in military
operations since 9/11, air and naval
forces have sustained negligible casual-
ties relative to ground forces, which are
higher by a factor of 100. If war can be
reduced to the delivery of standoff, pre-
cision munitions against key targets,
the political consequences of casualties
decline correspondingly. Wars that can
be fought quickly and decisively, with-
out the need for major allies, mobiliz-
ing congressional and popular support,
or calling up the Reserve, pose lower
political risks domestically and inter-
nationally. But such an approach may
not be realistic or desirable. Few would
argue that rapid and decisive victory is
a negative. But perhaps wars that can
be fought without involving the Na-
tion at large ought to give pause.

An Emphasis on Land

If one looks closely, a fundamen-
tal assumption is at work here: the U.S.
military is now, or soon will be, inad-

if war can be reduced to the delivery
of standoff, precision munitions, the
political consequences of casualties
decline correspondingly

22 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Air Force

Hooker, McMaster, and Grey

equate to its national security tasks.
Inexplicably, our military dominance
in recent conflicts and our growing su-
periority relative to adversary states are
conjugated as a "profound change in
the strategic environment" sufficiently
alarming to "compel a transformation
of the U.S. military." 3 Official publica-
tions attempt to describe a nexus be-
tween nonstate actors such as al Qaeda
and an urgent need to embrace net-
work-centric warfare (NCW) — as though
shadowy, low-tech terrorist organiza-
tions were somehow more, not less,
vulnerable to precision strike. In fact,
NCW was first articulated years before
9/11 and is clearly more suited to at-
tacking fixed nodes and targetable cen-
ters of gravity than small cells of loosely
organized terrorists who communicate
by messenger and encrypted email.

There can be no question that
the emerging threat posed by interna-
tional terrorists possessing weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) is profoundly
dangerous. Destroying terrorists along
with their infrastructure and assets is
relatively straightforward, however,
once they are located. Tracking their
communications, funding, movement,

and access to unconventional weap-
ons is far more important and has little
to do with military transformation and
much to do with improving human
intelligence capabilities, interagency
processes, and sharing information with
allies. In this regard, the strategic nexus
that has been drawn between the war
on terrorism and transformation seems
somewhat forced, since the resources
allocated to "transformational" systems
such as the F-22 may actually detract
from solving the first order problem
of defeating WMD-equipped terrorism,
a far more serious threat to national
security than the prospect of state-on-
state conflict.

Advancing technology is yield-
ing striking improvements in preci-
sion-guided weaponry and in the
battlefield architecture for command,
control, communications, and intel-
ligence-sharing. The technology gap
that has opened between our likely
opponents and ourselves will only
widen. These trends reinforce the argu-
ments of transformation theorists, who
have long contended that informa-
tion and precision weapons alone can
largely determine the outcome of wars

Artist’s conception of littoral combat ship,
designed to ensure maritime dominance

and access for the joint force

fought on land. The debate intensified
following the collapse of the Soviet
Union, which brought an end to the
Air Force preoccupation with air-to-air
combat and the Navy focus on blue-
water sea control. The emphasis for all
four services today is found on land.
For the Air Force and Navy, in particu-
lar, this translates into standoff preci-
sion attacks against key land targets.
The recent campaigns in Afghanistan
and Iraq provide a preview of current
transformational thinking applied to
the battlefield. Indeed, it is likely that
campaign planning itself was crafted at
least in part to advance the transforma-
tion agenda. Our swift initial victories
over primitive opponents convinced
many that the age of transformation
had arrived.

Nevertheless, overemphasis on
airpower, precision engagement, and
information superiority at the expense
of an ability to seize and hold ground
will pose grave risks for decisionmak-
ers if allowed to crowd out, rather
than complement, other critical ca-
pabilities. There is no question that
airpower, encompassing missile strikes
and unmanned aerial vehicles as well
as manned aircraft, is the jewel in
America's national security crown. Its
flexibility, speed, range, and crushing
punch make it a first among equals.

The Problem of
Data Transmission

For all its virtues, airpower has
constraints. It lacks staying power.
Limited by aircrew endurance, weather,
weapons load, proximity of friendly
bases, tanker support, availability of
trained observers on the ground, and
other factors, combat aircraft cannot
stay on station indefinitely to domi-
nate and secure terrain. The targeting
process is only as good as the intel-
ligence it is fed. While fixed targets
can be attacked with good results,
a thinking, adaptive enemy (particu-
larly if blessed with an integrated air
defense system) will frequently move
high-value targets, conduct decep-
tion operations, and take refuge in

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 23

Forum

civilian areas. Most importantly, air-
power cannot physically seize and
control terrain. While airpower is un-
questionably the most effective form
of military might in the U.S. arsenal,
its limitations will persist for years to
come. Airpower alone left the enemy
in Iraq unimpressed in 2003, but it
proved phenomenally effective com-
bined with advancing ground forces.

Similarly, overreliance on infor-
mation superiority carries risks of its

own. The advent of digitization and
the proliferation of unmanned drones,
increasingly capable satellite plat-
forms, joint surveillance and target at-
tack radar systems, and a host of other
systems increasingly promises a high-
resolution picture of the battlefield

that will enable joint commanders to
locate, attack, and destroy an enemy
while remaining hidden themselves.
This concept of a view of the other side
of the hill suggests to many that the
friction and fog of the battlefield may
soon be a thing of the past.

If technology alone were the an-
swer, this might be true — although see-
ing everything militarily significant
will probably never happen. But see-
ing the enemy is only half the battle.

Transmitting accurate in-
formation in real time to
systems and units that can
act on it immediately is the
challenge. Because battle-
field information and intel-
ligence flows through and across mul-
tiple organizational boundaries and
interfaces, it will inevitably be delayed,
altered, or otherwise distorted. Staffs
will take time to analyze and interpret
new information and propose courses
of action rather than immediately

pass it unfiltered to subordinate and
adjacent formations.

In this regard, the fundamental
factor not addressed by transformation
advocates is how human beings pro-
cess information. This is independent
of the network's technical ability to
transfer information. The decision to
engage any target requires a human de-
cision informed by analysis. Separating
the important from the unimportant
has always daunted commanders and
staffs. Time rushes on as command-
ers and staffs wrestle with the thorny
problems of battle command. What is
the best system to engage an emerg-
ing target? How can we be sure who is
really there? Is this important enough
to postpone other engagements? What
about collateral damage and innocent
civilians? How much information
should be pushed down to small units,
and how much can they digest? Who
else needs to know? Are there friendly
elements in the area that are not on

transmitting accurate information in
real time to systems and units that can
act on it immediately is the challenge

24 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Air Force (John Ingle)

Hooker, McMaster, and Grey

the grid, such as intelligence elements,
local supporters, or sources? Who must
approve the strike?

These and other factors affect the
technical problem of data transmission.
They are not trivial concerns, nor are
they particularly susceptible to techni-
cal solutions. In fact, the explosion of
automation and computer systems in
headquarters has brought an increase,
not a decrease, in the size of head-
quarters staffs. So long as people make
battlefield decisions, they will stop and
think. So long as militaries are hierar-
chical, commanders will use their dis-
cretion. Whenever information crosses
an organizational boundary, it will be
altered, however subtly.

Perceptive adversaries will always
strive to influence this cycle by altering
commanders' perceptions — at times by
using our technological edge against us
to reinforce our operational and strate-
gic prejudices and assumptions. Perhaps
more than any other, this dimension
of transformation remains neglected.
We should work tirelessly to improve
the link between sensor and shooter. It
seems clear that order-of-magnitude in-
creases in lethality and timeliness are at
hand. Nevertheless, any vision of war
that posits a "frictionless" battlefield,

a "seamless" flow of information, and
"persistent and pervasive" intelligence
is deeply flawed.

The Need for Strategic Balance

There is also the very real question
of the fragility and vulnerability of the
network. The investment needed to
achieve the capabilities outlined in the
transformation agenda will be massive,
but effective asymmetric countermea-
sures are relatively cheap and read-
ily available. The technology to build,
field, and employ radiofrequency
weapons, also known as high-power
microwave weapons or "e-bombs,"
is rapidly proliferating. In fact, "any
nation with a 1950s technology base
capable of designing and building nu-
clear weapons and radars" can build
a crude version now, and "simple and
effective microwave weapons are ready
to go." 4 These weapons can profoundly
affect information systems, particularly
as most systems fielded since the Cold
War (especially miniaturized, wireless,
and off-the-shelf commercial systems)
are not hardened against electromag-
netic pulse and related effects.

The fact that many of our likely
adversaries will not be technologically
advanced states with easily targetable

centers of gravity also reinforces the
need for strategic balance. These oppo-
nents may fight us on the low end to
bleed us over time, communicating by
messenger, wearing no uniforms, and
existing in the midst of large popula-
tions unsympathetic to American war
aims. Asymmetry cuts both ways, as
the Russians have found in Chechnya,
the Israelis in the occupied territories,
and coalition forces in Iraq.

All this is not to say that the re-
lationship between different forms of
military power remains unchanged. We
may well have evolved to the point
where the traditional roles of ground
and air forces are reversed in major con-
ventional operations. Tomorrow's wars,
like Afghanistan and Iraq, will likely see
ground formations forcing the enemy
into the open, where airpower and pre-
cision strike play the decisive role. But in
urban settings, close terrain like Korea,
or postconflict operations like Iraq, a
strong ground capability will be central
to success. Tomorrow's joint force can-
not seize and hold ground from the
air or depend on surrogate armies with
their own agendas and doubtful capa-
bilities. The interrelationship between
all forms of military power — ground,
sea, air, space, and information — is the
wellspring of American strategic might.

That synergy is in fact precisely the
point. For decades, the Pentagon's great-
est strategic asset has been strength in
all dimensions. Able to project all forms
of military power over great distances
and sustain them virtually indefinitely,
the United States combines powerful
land forces, overwhelming air forces,
superior naval forces, and unrivalled
nuclear, space, and information capa-
bilities, making it the most dominant
power on the planet by a wide margin.
But recent military successes must not
obscure the fundamental basis of that
strength. In postconflict or stability op-
erations and major combat operations
alike, a strong and sustainable ground
„ force will be indispensable to achiev-
8 ing political objectives. That capability
| must not be allowed to wither in the
§ rush to transform.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 25

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■ getting transformation right

Viewing Transformation
Cautiously

The history of armed conflict
in the 20 th century supports the the-
sis that advanced technology alone
is not enough. In 1940, the Germans
were equipped with fewer tanks, guns,
and troops than their opponents, and
the equipment they did have was in-
ferior. Yet they overran the Norwe-
gians, Danes, French, Belgians, Dutch,
and British in a few weeks. Eighteen
months later, they owned all of Eu-
rope, from the Arctic Circle to Crete,
and from the Atlantic to the gates of
Moscow. The sources of German power
lay not in numbers, equipment, or
technology, but in leadership, training,
organization, and doctrine.

The Korean and Vietnam conflicts
are also instructive. Although dra-
matically outmatched in air and naval
power, and lacking most of the high-
tech weaponry of the United States,
North Korea and North Vietnam fought
American forces to a standstill in pro-
longed wars that saw Washington com-
mit hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Technology was unable to convincingly
defeat a resolute opponent fighting on
favorable terrain, enabled by "off-lim-
its" sanctuaries across the border, and
motivated by ideological goals.

The examples of the Korean War
in 1950, the Gulf War in 1991, and the
9/11 attacks also demonstrate that con-
fidence in our ability to assess future
threats and conflicts must be heavily
qualified. We cannot know for certain
where, when, and under what condi-
tions the U.S. military may be called
on to fight. In fact, the very certainty
with which transformation advocates
assert their theories gives pause. Fore-
knowledge of adversary intentions and
political dynamics is an art as much as
a science, one not always amenable to
signal intercepts and satellite photos.

A conflict on the Korean Penin-
sula, for example, could obviate lessons
learned from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The prize of Seoul lies just across the
border, well inside North Korean artil-
lery range. Pyongyang would almost

certainly move to interdict U.S. air
and sea ports of debarkation, employ-
ing chemical or biological weapons
far behind the initial line of contact.
American airpower and precision en-
gagement would be severely degraded
by weather, mountainous terrain, and
fortifications shielding much of the
North's artillery and command and
control. With massive forces facing
each other at close range, the effec-
tiveness of stand-off weapons would
be lessened as well. Hard fighting in
complex terrain will be needed to pre-
vail in Korea.

Most military officers share the
above concerns intuitively and expe-
rientially. Recent war college studies
reveal that members of all four ser-
vices view transformation more cau-
tiously than their civilian counterparts.
While supportive of information-based
warfare as a way to achieve more de-
cisive results with lower casualties, a
strong majority are unwilling to reduce
force structure or readiness in favor of
new approaches to warfare. Most serv-
ing officers express confidence in the
military's ability to cope with current
and projected threats without radically
altering the force, especially in a time
of unprecedented turbulence. Among

Army and Marine officers particularly,
warfare is viewed as a human endeavor,
not a technical exercise. Thus the char-
acter of war retains its human face.

These considerations suggest the
need for more serious analysis of trans-
formation's key concepts and asser-
tions, as well as more specificity about
desired capabilities, programs, and
tradeoffs. Although the momentum be-
hind transformation is enormous, the
future of our national security demands
that we think clearly and holistically
and adopt a strategically balanced and
perhaps more evolutionary approach.
Revolutionary or radical change is ex-
citing, but we cannot afford to get it
wrong. In the business world, which
has so profoundly influenced transfor-
mation thinking, the price of failure
is a drop in earnings or corporate col-
lapse. Failure in war brings infinitely
more enduring penalties.

An aggressive but evolutionary ap-
proach to transformation, which pushes
the envelope without breaking it, offers
a balance between enhanced capabili-
ties and acceptable strategic risk. That
evolution need not be lengthy, but it
must not risk everything on strategic
doctrines that discount the funda-
mental principle of strategic balance.

Joint Direct Attack Munitions to be
loaded on Marine F/A-18 supporting

26 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Marine Corps (Paul Leicht)

Hooker, McMaster, and Grey

WASHING

The Department «
of Defense...

Continuing to Transform
for the 21p Century

Secretary Rumsfeld briefing reporters on
DOD FY06 budget submission, February 2005

A monist strategy, relying on informa-
tion technology and precision strike
while neglecting the means needed
to actually seize and control the land,
offers politically attractive but illusory
benefits. If history teaches anything,
it is that war is as unpredictable in its
forms and processes as it is enduring
in the realm of human affairs. Today,
the United States enjoys an order of
magnitude advantage over potential
adversaries in the military sphere. By
relying on a balanced and synergis-
tic application of all forms of military
power, we can be confident that our
dominance will continue to serve our
national interests.

By all means, the exciting po-
tential of the information revolution
should be harnessed to make America
safer. The ability to share information
more quickly and deliver weapons ef-
fects more precisely ought to be pur-
sued vigorously. But we must not aban-
don the true sources of our military
power as we transform. We must not
become a military that can do only
one thing: standoff precision strike.

While the conduct of war continues to
change, its nature and character will
not. The field of human conflict re-
mains ineluctably human, not techni-
cal; inherently complex, not orderly;
and inescapably defined by the land
and the populations and resources
found there.

All agree that transformation holds
great promise for a more effective mili-
tary and a safer America. All thoughtful
professionals should applaud the push
to enhance our ability to share informa-
tion rapidly and attack enemies in a
timely and precise manner. But we must
not become so dependent on high-reso-
lution information that we lose our
capacity to fight without it. The debate
about transformation must not be al-
lowed to become an ideological litmus
test. Despite efforts to tie everything the
military is or does to it, transformation
is not an end in itself. Enhancing the
security of the Nation and its people
must ever be the objective. Rigorous,
searching analysis, which combines
both hard-won combat experience in

the field and a strong intellectual foun-
dation, is needed now.

In future years and future wars,
America's sons and daughters in uni-
form will reap the rewards, or bear the
cost, of transforming our military. They
will man the legions that will largely
determine the course of national se-
curity. We owe it to them and to the
American people to get it right. JFQ

NOTES

1 Department of Defense Office of
Force Transformation, Military Transforma-
tion: A Strategic Approach (Washington:
Director, Force Transformation, Office of
the Secretary of Defense, 2003), 8.

2 Frederick W. Kagan, "War and After-
math," Policy Review, (August 2003), 22.

3 Military Transformation, 29.

4 See Michael Abrams, "The Dawn of
the E-Bomb," Spectrum (November 2003),
11, 24-30.

Do you have another point of view? Consider JFQ as
an outlet. See www.ndu.edu/inss/press/nduphp.html for

information on submitting articles and letters to the editor.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 27

DOD (Helene C. Stikkel)

Forum

Transformation in
Concept and Policy

By STEPHEN J. CIMBALA

T he subject of military trans-
formation has expanded to
the point that it transcends
focused discussion. From
a cult phenomenon among military
historians, government officials, and
policy analysts in the 1980s and 1990s,
the concept has morphed into a 21 st -
century all-purpose explanation for
military decisionmaking. It provides a
rationale for expanded foreign policy
objectives. Further, it has been adopted
as a touchstone by the Department of

Defense (DOD), especially the civilian
leadership, to justify weapons programs
and operational approaches. Finally, it
has been the object of scholastic atten-
tion. Transformation is thus in danger
of being the most oversold military-stra-
tegic concept since deterrence. A vast
academic and military literature and
extensive policy-related discussion have
raised important questions about U.S.
military policy, strategy, and war. Trans-
formation, as understood by Pentagon
planners and the punditocracy, has the

potential to improve military perfor-
mance in important ways. But it is far
from a guarantor of strategic success or
sensible policy choices at the margin.
This discussion asks pertinent questions
about what transformation means and
explores its implications for policy and
strategy issues that have both immedi-
ate and longer-term importance.

A Nuclear Retro

Despite a large literature, uncer-
tainty remains about exactly what trans-
formation is. A transformed military
presumably thinks differently about the
art of war and about preparation for
battle than one that is not transformed.
It might also have a different relation-
ship with the society it serves. Financ-
ing the Armed Forces is presumably also
affected: transformation might make
militaries more or less expensive, either
per unit of effect or relative to other
components of state budgets. Finally,
transformation might lead to a rethink-
ing of the very purposes of armies and
the utility of war itself.

Stephen J. Cimbala is a distinguished professor of political science at Pennsylvania
State University, Delaware County, and author of The Past and Future of Nuclear
Deterrence and Coercive Military Strategy.

28 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Combat Camera Group, Pacific (Edward G. Martens)

C i m b a I a

Discussions of the revolution in
military affairs, as military transfor-
mation was first known among aficio-
nados, sometimes assumed that the
impact of technology on strategy was
straightforward and progressive. But
history refutes the assumption of a lin-
ear relationship. Consider an example.

Nuclear weapons were first used
in anger to bring World War II to a
conclusion. Many observers assumed
that atomic weapons were a continu-

ation of the industrial age technology
of mass destruction. And so they were,
from a strictly technical standpoint.
Thus early Cold War military plan-
ning incorporated nuclear weapons
within a broader strategic framework
of total war with the Soviet Union.
All available nuclear weapons would
be used in the early phases of such a
conflict. Once those were expended, a
large-scale protracted conventional war
between mass armies, air forces, and
fleets would take place across Europe
and Asia until one side or the other
was exhausted of its war resources.
Nuclear weapons did not appear to
have changed military strategy and
preparedness for major war in any fun-
damental way from this perspective.

It soon became apparent that strat-
egy had been changed not only at the
margin, but also in essence. Fighting
to prevail in combat with the most de-
structive weapons at hand was now
applicable only in wars fought below
the nuclear threshold. Further refine-
ment of strategic thinking established
that the numbers of U.S. and Soviet
warheads and delivery systems were
less important than the survivability
of those forces against any plausible
first strike and their ability to inflict
retaliation on enemy targets. It also
came to be understood that not only
did nuclear forces need to be survivable,

but also their command, control, and
communications systems needed to be
safe from two types of errors: launching
a "retaliatory” strike when no actual at-
tack was under way, or failing to launch
a timely strike despite a clear indication
that the United States was under attack.

This review of how nuclear weap-
ons evolved, from apparent strategic
garnishes on prior weapons of mass
destruction into true instruments that
revolutionized warfare, makes an im-
portant point. The early
stages of a military revo-
lution may conceal more
than they reveal about
the ultimate impact of a
particular set of technolo-
gies on warfare and armed
forces. Only in hindsight can we ap-
preciate how far the U.S. and Soviet
strategies of the Cold War had to de-
part from prior tradition and training.
This example should be kept in mind
as we generalize about the impact of
the information age on warfare.

The Afghan Model

The conjunction of breakthroughs
in electronics, communications, and cy-
bernetics has impacted every aspect of
American life, including military affairs.
Accordingly, some argue that informa-
tion-based warfare is a true military
revolution, or a new revolution in mili-
tary affairs, comparable to the Napole-
onic, industrial, or nuclear revolutions,
and potentially bigger on account of
its global impact. The United States, by
adapting faster and more effectively to
information-based technologies, can
achieve global military preeminence
by linking a system of systems that
will provide nearly comprehensive bat-
tlespace awareness for U.S. command-
ers while denying it to enemies.

The most pertinent technologies
to be leveraged in order to maintain
U.S. superiority in information-based
warfare have been described as com-
mand, control, communications,
computers, intelligence, surveillance,
and reconnaissance (C 4 ISR); precision-
guided weapons, especially those of

longer range; stealth or low-observ-
able delivery systems; and more reli-
able and flexible networks, permitting
coordination of battlespace awareness
among diverse force elements; and the
synchronization of multiple fires from
various platforms and arms of service
on assigned targets. In addition, the
United States is assumed to require
superior capability to exploit space for
military purposes relative to the ca-
pabilities of any enemy. Space denial
practiced against the United States
would negate advantages in most of
the categories of information age sys-
tems just noted.

Policymakers and defense analysts
further contend that superiority in
C 4 ISR and long-range precision strike,
in particular, were displayed in Afghan-
istan and Iraq. Some find the Afghan
model a particularly vivid demonstra-
tion of how leveraging technology can
permit rapid and decisive victory at low
cost in U.S., noncombatant, and even
enemy lives. This new American way of
war has, according to some, superseded
the previously dominant U.S. military
paradigm of protracted wars of attrition
fought by mass armies, as in the Ameri-
can Civil War and the two World Wars.

Were the wars in Afghanistan in
2001-2002 and in Iraq in 2003 exam-
ples of successful transformation? The
Donald Rumsfeld Pentagon thinks so.
It has used these conflicts to sweep
aside the more cautious proponents
of gradual, as opposed to accelerated,
changes in technology, organization,
and doctrine (to include operational
art and tactics). The sudden collapse of
Iraqi resistance around Baghdad and
the meltdown of Saddam Hussein's
crack Republican Guard divisions set to
defend the capital appeared to silence
the critics and justify the Pentagon's
strategy of substituting speed, agility,
and savvy for size and strength. In the
government as well as in the defense
analytic community, proponents of
network-centric warfare and "shock
and awe" as new templates for U.S.
warfighting felt vindicated. As Frederick
W. Kagan noted:

the early stages of a military revolution
may conceal more than they reveal
about the ultimate impact of a
particular set of technologies

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 29

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■ transformation in concept and policy

"Shock and awe," network-centric war-
fare, dominant (or predictive) battlespace
awareness — these are the critical con-
cepts that define the current visions of
U.S. military transformation as they are
being planned, programmed, and executed
today. They rely unequivocally on having
essentially perfect intelligence about the
enemy such that American commanders
will be able to predict what he will do in
time to take action to prevent it. 1

Some experts doubt that the U.S.
and allied war against the Taliban and
al Qaeda in Afghanistan demonstrated
an Afghan model of warfare that can
serve as a paradigm for other conflicts.
According to Stephen Biddle, Afghani-
stan is neither an example of military
revolution nor an idiosyncratic fluke.
The victory was made possible by the
combination of long-range, lethal fire-
power and skilled ground maneuver
in a campaign that was close to a typi-
cal 20 th -century mid-intensity conflict.
Biddle writes:

Many now believe that in Afghanistan we
turned a ragtag militia into conquerors
who subsequently overwhelmed a supe-
rior enemy by simply walking forward in
the wake of our precision bombing. This
belief is largely responsible for the general
perception of military revolution in Af-
ghanistan — and if the war had really been
fought this way, then the perception would
be right. But the war was not actually
fought this way. And what did happen
was much closer to the long-standing his-
torical precedent on the need for integrat-
ing fire and maneuver to overcome skilled,
resolute opponents. 2

New technology makes it possible
to apply the Afghan model where allies
provide ground maneuver forces that
are at least the equal of their enemies in
combat skills. But fire superiority aided
by all the bells and whistles of domi-
nant battlespace awareness and special
operations forces cannot guarantee vic-
tory where indigenous forces are poorly
trained, led, or motivated compared to
their opposite numbers. The Afghan
model is less a generic template for fu-
ture war than a model for those limited
situations in which U.S. allies can pro-

vide sufficient maneuver forces to tip
the balance against their adversaries.

The United States and Britain pro-
vided their own maneuver forces for
Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Indig-
enous allies such as Kurdish forces in
northern Iraq and Shi'a militia in the
south moved occupation forces into
contested areas after the Americans
had cleared them of the enemy. Trans-
formation proponents found that the
Pentagon had demonstrated a new way
of fighting major regional conflicts or
theater wars with limited numbers of
ground forces and without significant
indigenous assistance. U.S. and allied
dominating firepower was supported
by rapid and decisive maneuver warfare
that rolled up resistance by organized
Iraqi formations within several weeks.
A campaign that began on March 19
was effectively finished by mid-April,
and President Bush declared that the
active combat phase concluded on May
1. According to Max Boot:

Previously, the gold standard of opera-
tional excellence had been the German
blitzkrieg through the Low Countries
and France in 1940. The Germans man-
aged to conquer France, the Netherlands,
and Belgium in just 44 days, at a cost of
"only" 27,000 dead soldiers. The United
States and Britain took just 26 days to
conquer Iraq (a country 80 percent the size
of France), at a cost of 161 dead, making
fabled generals such as Erwin Rommel
and Heinz Guderian seem positively in-
competent by comparison. 3

The contrast between the Wehr-
macht thrust of 1940 and the U.S.
military campaign against Iraq in 2003
might be misleading on several counts.
First, the Pentagon was not fighting a
military opponent of the first rank in
Iraq, as was Germany against France.
Second, Germany's victory was not
based on superior technology (French
armor was actually better), but on its
operational art and field leadership. In
both wars against Iraq, the United States
was dominant in technology and in op-
erational art. Third, if the Germans had
failed to conquer France and the Low
Countries in a rapid and decisive cam-

paign, it would have spelled the end of
their plans for expansion in Europe and
quite possibly of Hitler's political mas-
tery at home. Germany had everything
at stake in 1940. The United States, on
the other hand, so overmatched its op-
ponent in Baghdad that loss was in-
conceivable. A more delayed campaign
than originally conceived was an out-
side possibility, but military defeat in
Mesopotamia was not.

Numbers Matter

The most important transforma-
tion in the Armed Forces since World
War II was the change from a draft to
an all- volunteer force (AVF). Related was
the deliberate shift in the relationship
between the Active and Reserve forces.

The first change, ending the draft
and creating the all-volunteer force
in the 1970s, really made possible the
American military preeminence of the
latter Cold War, post-Cold War era
(1990s), and early 21 st -century. Those
who fail to see this have put the cart
before the horse, crediting technol-
ogy with accomplishments that rightly
belong to an empowered military with
smarter and more motivated people.
The all-volunteer force obtained qual-
ity personnel who not only enlisted
but also reenlisted at unprecedented
rates. This improvement was critical
for enhancing the quality of the force,
for reenlistees provided the nucleus
from which the senior sergeants, chief
petty officers, and other drivers of
combat effectiveness in the field were
recruited. Although the AVF recruit-
ment had a rocky beginning in the
1970s, by the end of the Reagan years
the military, compared to its 1950s or
Vietnam counterparts, was unrecogniz-
able in terms of the motivation, cogni-
tive ability, and leadership skills of its
junior officers and enlistees.

Military innovation is both top-
down and bottom-up. For technology
to find its way into military transfor-
mation, it must impact on doctrine,
organization, and training related to
combat. DOD and service leaders must
push from the top. Technologies not

30 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

C i m b a I a

owned by any service or supported by
high-ranking officers have little chance
of survival. Joint technology devel-
opment requires collaboration across
services and high-octane promotion
from the Office of the Secretary of
Defense. DOD and service technol-
ogy development programs are part of
the larger budgetary process, which
Congress ultimately controls.

Technology means nothing in
war if it is lodged with a general staff
that is remote from the field forces and
rankers who must apply it for more
effective fire and maneuver against an
enemy. Soldiers are the best arbiters of
mission effectiveness, and the lower

the rank, the more ground truth is ob-
tained. The validation of technology
effectiveness in terms of mission re-
quires smart soldiers who are empow-
ered to speak frankly. "Zero defects"
mentalities or preformatted "lessons
learned" are killers of the initiative re-
quired for a fast-moving, quick-think-
ing, and cyber-smart military. Even
before the information age, militar-
ies that encouraged lower-level initia-
tive and responsibility were rewarded

with superior performances. The Ger-
man armed forces in the World Wars
are examples.

Command was optional prior to
the information age. Armies could still
prevail under a totally top-down sys-
tem that treated the enlisted soldier
and junior officer as serfs, as the Soviet
army did in World War II. The option
of cannon-fodder command no longer
exists for any state that aspires to be a
regional power, let alone a global one.

The United States provided a quick
syllabus to this effect in Iraqi Freedom.
The opposing military was decisively
routed, and the regime was displaced in
a matter of days. One reason was Iraq's
obsolete command sys-
tem, modeled on the So-
viet structure. Lower-level
initiative was precluded
within the chain of com-
mand: all orders were bot-
tlenecked through central
bureaus and command centers. When
those pressure points were rendered
dysfunctional by destruction or cyber-
corruption, orders to Republican Guard
and other field commanders were non-
existent or garbled. Absent meaningful
and timely orders, Iraqi commanders
and rankers lay down their arms, de-
fected, or otherwise dissolved.

The performance of the U.S.
Armed Forces in Afghanistan against
the Taliban and al Qaeda stands in

transformation proponents found that
the Pentagon had a new way of fighting
with limited ground forces and without
significant indigenous assistance

strong contrast to the Iraqi showing.
Adaptive mission successes resulted
from the impact of smart people ex-
ploiting technology for maximum ef-
fect. Predator drones were used not
only as reconnaissance or surveillance
platforms, but also as launchers of air-
to-ground missiles that could be used
to attack detected but elusive targets.

Special operations forces really
came of age in the Afghan war. Dur-
ing most of the Cold War they were
stepchildren, and a separate joint spe-
cial operations command was not es-
tablished until the Reagan administra-
tion, and then by congressional fiat.
Special operations forces were accepted
into Desert Stonn with reluctance by the
theater command and were used only
for carefully circumscribed missions. By
Iraqi Freedom, the emergence of special
operations forces as pillars of strategy
instead of optional adjuncts to regular
forces was not an issue. Their perfor-
mance there was followed by the DOD
announcement that U.S. Special Opera-
tions Command (SOCOM) would have
its own planning structure like other
unified or specified commands. It would
no longer be a mere supplier of forces
but could now plan its own missions.
The Pentagon decision in 2003 to ap-
point General Peter Schoomaker, USA
(Ret.), formerly Commander, SOCOM,
as Army Chief of Staff, sent a signal that
the centrality of special operations forces
in transformation was irreversible.

SOCOM had come a long way from
the days when President John Kennedy
had to authorize personally the green
beret as approved headgear for Army
special forces over the objection of the
service brass. Equally telling was Army
Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki's
controversial decision to assign black
berets to regular Army troops. His move
was widely derided by former Army
Rangers and others who understandably
coveted the black beret as a special sym-
bol of valor and branch solidarity. But
the critics missed the larger message:
in a post-Cold War force that must be
smaller, faster, and smarter, everybody
is required to think "special" and be

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 31

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■ transformation in concept and policy

"special.” There is no more room for
menu-driven personalities.

A danger lurks in this otherwise
optimistic assessment of military per-
sonnel. In the conduct of warfare,
especially land warfare, numbers still
matter — in peace, in war, and in the
postconflict phase of nationbuilding.
They matter for deterrence, defense,
and postwar reconstruction. The mili-
tary is currently spread too thin across
geostrategic and sociopolitical space.
Geostrategically, the United States has
substantial troop commitments from Af-
ghanistan to Bosnia. Planners say more
instead of fewer troops may be needed
to stabilize and rebuild Iraq, and Af-
ghanistan has yet to be fully pacified or
freed of danger from warlords and the
Taliban. Sociopolitically, increased op-
erational tempos imposed on a smaller
active-duty force have strained the pa-
tience of military families and caused
the Pentagon to rethink its rotation
policies in Iraq. The postconflict phase
of Iraqi Freedom has already exposed an
interagency fiasco in prewar planning
for postwar nationbuilding, including
an underestimation of the numbers of
troops needed for internal security and
other nationbuilding missions.

Empires by Consent

This essay argues that the U.S. mili-
tary supremacy of the 21 st century is the
result of a smarter and more motivated
military that could take maximum ad-
vantage of technological innovation.
Less competent personnel would have
taken information technology into their
bosoms more slowly and to less effect.
There remains another issue: the char-
acter of civil-military relations.

After Iraqi Freedom, DOD an-
nounced plans to reorganize the Armed
Forces so that prolonged or manpower-
intensive deployments would require
less Reserve component mobilization,
especially in the Army. That seemed
like a merely technical matter, but it
was more far-reaching. The Pentagon's
interest in relying less on Reserves and
more on active-duty forces for overseas
deployments and foreign wars has a
history that should not be forgotten.

As the Army licked its wounds
from Vietnam and considered how to
adapt to the all-volunteer force, General
Creighton Abrams, Chief of Staff, initi-
ated important organizational reforms.
He and other Army leaders decided to
restructure the service so policymakers
could never again wage a large-scale,

protracted war without mobilizing
broad popular and congressional sup-
port. To that end, they placed impor-
tant capabilities needed for any major
regional contingency or theater war in
the Army National Guard and Reserve.

This structure would raise the vis-
ibility of the deployments for members
of Congress and the media, making
middle America immediately aware of
military call-ups and mobilizations. In
short, there would be no more escala-
tions of limited wars into major wars
by stealth, as happened in Vietnam,
with the Army left holding the bag
after the aims of policymakers shifted
| from victory to stalemate. As the 1980s
| and 1990s demonstrated, a President
■§■ can still act rapidly and decisively in a
| short and intensive military operation
I without extensive mobilization, as in
§ Grenada, Panama, and Haiti. But apart
from small wars and local conflicts,
including humanitarian rescues and
military operations other than war, the
Reserve would be involved like Chi-
cago voters: early and often.

Policymakers anxious for maxi-
mum flexibility in using military power,
apart from the vicissitudes of public
opinion, were understandably unhappy
with the Abrams reforms that embed-
ded vital military competencies in the
Reserves. But noted academic experts
on civil-military relations have also ar-
gued that the Abrams reorganization is
too restrictive. Eliot Cohen, for exam-
ple, after acknowledging that General
Abrams was a true patriot and believer
in the U.S. Constitution, argues:

Fhis was, nonetheless, an extraordinary
effort by the military to limit the choices
available to their civilian masters, to tie the
hands of policymakers through the seem-
ingly technical manipulation of organiza-
tional structures. ... It does not seem to
have occurred to either soldier or statesman,
however, that there is something highly
improper, to say the least, in allowing the
armed services to thus determine the ways
in which they could be used in combat.*

The argument is clever but wrong.
The issue is not constitutional subver-
sion of policymakers' options, inten-

32 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

C i m b a I a

tional or otherwise. Properly framed,
it is whether policymakers receive the
most brutal and honest advice about
the costs of war not only from their
appointed civil and military counsel-
ors, but also from the American popu-
lace and their elected representatives
in Congress. The Army belongs not to
the Congress or the President but to
the American populace. If the President
cannot mobilize broad public support
for a war, then he has no business send-
ing troops into that theater for pro-
longed combat. This prescription is not
a recipe for isolationism but for realism.

Proponents of a new American
empire ignore the reality of histori-
cal European and other empires, even
those that survived into the 20 th cen-
tury. America fights most effectively as
a united country when it fights wars
of liberation — not of imperial con-
quest or subjugation. Some argue that
since the Spanish-American War, the
United States has been in the business
of steadily building an American global
empire that has come to fruition at the
dawn of the 21 st century. The empire
is fact: the only argument should be
about how to run it.

The controversy over empire con-
trasts the European experience with
American options. The empires of the
19 th and 20 th centuries preceded glo-
balization and the information revolu-
tion. These domains, including the So-
viet Union, have vanished. Nowadays,
peoples are not as easily repressed in
the name of a foreign power, ideol-
ogy, or commonwealth. Future empires
must thus be based on voluntary con-
sent and exist within a global village of
finance, information, and technology.

Influence is based on soft power —
the appeal of national culture and
norms — as much as on hard power —
the ability to coerce or destroy. Infor-
mation makes repression harder and
resistance easier, even against totalitar-
ian regimes. Mikhail Gorbachev was
brought down by many forces, but
among the more important was the
information revolution, which leaped
across state boundaries and revealed

to the Soviet peoples that they were
locked into an archaic political system.

Whether the United States prevails
in the postconflict stage of the Iraq war
of 2003, for example, will have as much
to do with its ability to exercise soft
power as hard power. The information
war and the culture war after May 2003
will dictate whether the active com-
bat phase was a success or a premature
declaration of victory. Regardless of the
outcome, Washington is not headed for
any empire in the Middle East, and its
military is already spread so thin that
taking on any additional opponent in
that region is virtually precluded, even
assuming there is no outbreak of war
on the Korean Peninsula during the
George W. Bush presidency. The sec-
ond Gulf War that toppled Saddam
revealed that, despite Pentagon deni-
als, the Army is short of people for the
missions it already has. Plans to replace
some military positions with civilians
might add to efficiency but will not
make up for missing battalions and
divisions. The case for reducing the
number of active-duty divisions from
10 to 8, proposed prior to Iraqi Freedom,
appears ever less convincing.

Arguments against an American
global empire are not rebutted by cit-
ing the historical experience of U.S.
forces fighting small wars in the West-
ern Hemisphere, including Marine ex-
peditions in the Caribbean and Central
America. The banana wars and other
engagements were of a different geostra-
tegic character than expansive designs
for a Middle Eastern or South Asian
empire. The Western Hemisphere is the
military and political U.S. back yard.
Regimes hostile to American interests,
especially those close to U.S. shores
and connected to foreign adversaries,
cannot be tolerated if the Nation is to
maintain credibility as a great power.
Acting as sheriff of the hemisphere is
not an option. Nor is Washington free
to withdraw its commitment to act,
in concert with North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) Allies, in support
of European pacification and democ-
ratization. Making Europe a war-free

zone was one of the greatest political
achievements of the 20 th century, and
U.S. support for NATO was a key ele-
ment of that achievement. National
credibility is also at stake in historic
commitments to Israel, South Korea,
Taiwan, and Japan.

Given commitments already ta-
bled prior to our 21 st -century wars in
Afghanistan and in Mesopotamia, it
seems imprudent for the military to
remain mute in the face of policymak-
ers' tastes for imperial overstretch. The
best photo of the postwar occupation
of Iraq in summer 2003 showed a Re-
servist driving a jeep whose windshield

read: "One month my ." Whether

full- or part-time, American soldiers are
civilians in uniform, not janissaries or
mercenaries.

U.S. soldiers are not a military
class apart from their civilian origins.
They draw their strength from family
and friends in their communities. That
strength is the cultural and spiritual
expectation that they are doing the
right thing for the right reasons. Under
those conditions the United States is
unstoppable. Absent those supports,
war is a risky proposition, as likely to
destroy what we value as enhance it.
Our civil-military relations should not
make wars easy to wage, but rather
hard, so that once we agree, the debate
can end and the fighting to good effect
can begin. That is the real lesson about
our 20 th -century wars. JFQ

NOTES

1 Fredrick W. Kagan, "War and After-
math," Policy Review (August 2003), 5.

2 Stephen Biddle, Afghanistan and the
Future of Warfare: Implications for Army and
Defense Policy (Carlisle Barracks, PA: Strate-
gic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College,
2002), 48-49.

3 Max Boot, "The New American Way
of War,” Foreign Affairs (July/ August 2003),
41-58, citation 44.

4 Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command:
Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime
(New York: The Free Press, 1992), 187.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 33

Forum

Beyond

Goldwater-Nichols

New Proposals for Defense Reform

By CLARK A. MURDOCK

O n March 18, 2004, the
Center for Strategic and
International Studies
(CSIS) released Beyond
Goldwater-Nichols: Defense Reform for a
New Strategic Era: Phase 1 Report. This

and RICHARD W. WEITZ

event culminated almost 2 years of
effort at CSIS, which began by develop-
ing an approach for both revisiting the
Goldwater-Nichols Department of De-
fense Reorganization Act of 1986 and
for addressing issues that were beyond

Clark A. Murdock is senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies. Richard W. Weitz is associate director of the Center for Future Security
Studies at the Hudson Institute and a member of the Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
study team.

the scope of that landmark legislation.
The project was officially launched in
November 2002. When a CSIS team
briefed Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and his top advisers on Janu-
ary 10, 2003, the Secretary urged CSIS
to accelerate its efforts so the results
would be available for the 2004 legisla-
tive cycle. In response, the center de-
cided to address its issue agenda in two
tranches, planning initially to release
a Phase 1 report in February that both
analyzed and made recommendations
on a smaller set of issues, with a Phase
2 report to follow in December 2003.

Congressional interest in defense
reform grew as a result of the Bush
administration's last-minute (that is,
shortly before the House and Senate
voted on the defense authorization
bill) submission of its proposals for
changes in the military and civilian
military personnel system. Although
the provisions affecting military per-
sonnel were stripped from the autho-
rization bill, the House version, which
was largely accepted by the Senate
during conference negotiations in the
fall, substantially revamped the civil-
ian personnel system. Congressional
appropriators, however, decided that
defense reform issues warranted addi-
tional attention and provided $1 mil-
lion in the fiscal year 2004 defense
appropriations bill to support further
work. This enabled CSIS to address a
much broader range of issues during its
Phase 2 effort, which will end with the
release of its report. This article sum-
marizes the Phase 1 report and outlines
the Phase 2 agenda.

The CSIS Approach to
Defense Reform

Acutely aware of the risks asso-
ciated with making changes to orga-
nizational structures and processes,
the Beyond Goldwater-Nichols study
team employed a problem-centric ap-
proach to defense reform. It would
recommend organizational or process
changes only if the problems appeared
sufficiently important to warrant the
risks of unintended consequences.

34 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Murdock and Weitz

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" was the
first operating assumption.

For example, Goldwater-Nichols
sought improved military effective-
ness through greater jointness in the
planning and conduct of military op-
erations. Although one can identify
insufficient jointness in how the U.S.
military has planned (such as Opera-
tion Anaconda in Operation Enduring
Freedom), it routinely conducts awe-
somely effective operations, making
additional defense reforms unnecessary
in this area. On the other hand, the

unity of effort that Goldwater-Nichols
brought to the planning and conduct
of military operations has not charac-
terized U.S. interagency operations. As
illustrated most recently in Afghanistan
and Iraq, that problem is sufficiently
severe to warrant accepting the risks as-
sociated with organizational change.

To enhance its understanding of
these complex issues, the Beyond Gold-
water-Nichols team relied heavily on
the experiences of former practitioners
to both identify problems and develop
pragmatic recommendations. In par-
ticular, team members chaired multiple
meetings of 5 working groups consist-
ing of 120 former civilian and military
officials who held senior positions in
the national security apparatus. The
team also drew on interviews, case
studies, and real-life lessons learned.
The initial drafts, findings, and recom-
mendations were extensively vetted
throughout the Department of Defense
(DOD). John Hamre, President of CSIS,
also hosted three "murder board" ses-
sions of high-level former officials to
review the Phase 1 results. Recommen-
dations were arrived at not deductively
from some ideal organizational end-
state, but inductively from the collec-
tive experience of participants. The
team developed experience-grounded
solutions to clearly identified problems.

Although initially focused solely
on defense reform, the CSIS approach
soon looked beyond the scope of the
original Goldwater-Nichols Act as it
addressed national security issues that
concern the entire U.S. Government,
not just DOD. As we now see in both
Afghanistan and Iraq, ultimate suc-
cess requires that effective post-con-
flict "stability operations" ensue from
victorious "major combat operations."
Defense reform must look beyond
purely defense issues because, in many
instances, ultimate success hinges on
how well DOD inte-
grates with other gov-
ernment agencies and
coalition partners. Dur-
ing its initial prepara-
tory stages, the Beyond
Goldwater-Nichols team identified lack
of unity in strategy development, plan-
ning, and the conduct of interagency
operations, as well as the increasingly
difficult relationship between Con-
gress and the Office of the Secretary
of Defense (OSD), as two of the most
vexing problems for DOD. Thus, it ad-
opted the title Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
rather than Goldwater-Nichols Revisited
or Goldwater-Nichols II.

The team's final operating assump-
tion was its belief in the necessity of
building capability to ensure that any
individual or organization given new
roles or responsibilities can execute
them. Recommending that an insti-
tution, with its current structure and
capabilities, assume expanded respon-
sibilities in a new process is an empty
mandate. Telling people to improve or
change without providing the means
and resources consistent with their
new responsibilities typically leads to
inaction, ineffectiveness, and failure.

In its approach to defense reform,
the Beyond Goldwater-Nichols team
has employed six guiding principles to
shape its analysis. The first core prin-
ciple is that preserving civilian control
over the military represents a para-
mount value in the American political
system and a prime responsibility of
the Secretary of Defense. Since the es-

tablishment of DOD in 1949, the Presi-
dent has relied on the Secretary — who
has absolute authority, subject to the
consent of the President, over the de-
partment — to ensure the execution
of laws, congressional mandates, and
Presidential priorities in the area of de-
fense policy. Over time, the Secretary
has turned increasingly to his Under
Secretaries as the principal means for
exercising control of the military. The
Service Secretaries, however, continue
to assist in providing direction to the
department.

The team's second guiding princi-
ple is the need to maintain the institu-
tional vitality of the military services.
It is they who build and sustain the
profession of arms in their respective
mediums of warfare — that is, the body
of expert knowledge and the men and
women trained in the application of
that knowledge to new circumstances.
Identifying with the services also mo-
tivates young men and women to
withstand the rigors of combat. In the
words of Major General Tom Wilker-
son, USMC, "I didn't sign up to be a
'DOD-er.' I wanted to be a Marine.” As
force providers to the combatant com-
mands, the services are charged with
formulating coherent budgets that bal-
ance the near-term demand of current
operations with the need to invest in
future capabilities.

The third principle guiding the
team's approach is that extending
jointness in some areas will produce
superior military, interagency, and co-
alition operations. Jointness, however,
is not an end in itself, but a means to
achieving improvements in areas of
importance to national security. For
example, the increasingly seamless
use of forces in the field makes the
lack of integration in how the services
equip their forces less acceptable. As
seen most recently in Iraqi Freedom,
interoperability problems continue to
plague tactical communications and
contribute to friendly fire casualties. In
an effort to overcome such problems,
DOD has already restructured some
functions, such as Special Forces and

the unity of effort that Goldwater-Nichols
brought to military operations has not
characterized U.S. interagency operations

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 35

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■ beyond goldwater-nichols

missile defense, as integrated Depart-
ment-wide programs. Extending no-
tions of jointness to the interagency
and coalition levels could also improve
performance in these dimensions.

The fourth guiding principle is
that defense resources should continue
to be organized, managed, and bud-
geted along service lines. Goldwater-
Nichols has helped enable the separate
services to fight as a joint team. This
success in enhancing jointness in the
conduct of operations has led some
to advocate additional jointness in
how DOD organizes and prepares for
warfare. The study team gave serious
consideration to less service-centric ap-
proaches to managing resources, in-
cluding the British Defence Ministry's
reliance on joint capability managers
to define requirements and a central
procurement office for weapons acqui-
sition. But the analysis showed that the
services remain the single best source
for coherent and integrated budgets

within their respective domains. There-
fore, the team does not advocate alter-
ing the basic organizational formula
for how DOD allocates resources. Man-
aging resources on a distributed basis,
however, requires the continued devel-
opment of coordinating structures to
compensate for interservice seams.

The fifth guiding principle is that
the combatant commanders, services,
and defense agencies are the chief op-
erating elements. The primary func-
tion of OSD is to supervise DOD man-
agement. The main responsibility of
the Joint Staff is to oversee military
operations. As a rule, the Office of the
Secretary of Defense (OSD) should not
manage programs and the Joint Staff
should not function as an operational
general staff. As staffs supporting the
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(CJCS) and the Secretary, OSD and the

Joint Staff should focus on policy for-
mulation, policy representation, and
policy oversight. These represent essen-
tial responsibilities that no other DOD
element can perform.

The sixth guiding principle is belief
in the need to ensure a healthy compe-
tition of ideas on major issues among
the combatant commanders, services,
Joint Staff, and OSD. Each of these DOD
elements can offer valuable perspectives.
Having a diversity of views informs de-
cisions by ensuring the surfacing of all
key considerations. A balance must be
struck, however, between processes that
ensure a diversity of views on the most
critical issues and processes that create
too many competing power centers and
unnecessary friction.

Pragmatism has defined the Be-
yond Goldwater-Nichols study team
approach to defense reform. The team
relied heavily on experience when
identifying and analyzing problems. It
desired to preserve civilian control and
maintain the institutional vitality
of the services while extending
and broadening jointness where
it makes sense. While the team
wanted the best ideas to emerge
from a healthy struggle between
competing offices, it sought to
limit that competition to major issues.
Organizational reforms are rife with
unintended consequences. Like the sa-
gacity of the Hippocratic oath, the core
precept has been to do no harm.

Rationalizing DOD Structures

The current organizational struc-
tures of the military departments, the
Joint Staff, and OSD too often pro-
duce unnecessary overlap. In addition,
their sometimes oversized headquarters
staffs promote a narrow focus on small
issues and neglect of the big picture.
Duplicative and excessive staffs also
require wasteful coordination pro-
cesses. The arduous drill of securing
all the "chops" required to advance a
proposal frustrates innovators because
those supporting the status quo have
so many opportunities to block or di-
lute suggested changes.

Focusing on the core roles and
responsibilities of each principal DOD
actor exposes those institutions that
do not add sufficient value to out-
weigh these inefficiencies in process
and structure. The team favors a tar-
geted consolidation of organizational
structures that preserves a diversity of
ideas where warranted and strengthens
civilian oversight without impeding
independent military advice.

Fundamentally, all DOD elements
should support the Secretary because
he has ultimate responsibility for all
actions of the department. By focusing
on policy formulation, representation,
and oversight, OSD serves the Secretary
best. In the first role, the office con-
ducts analyses, develops policy options,
provides advice, and makes recommen-
dations. It also represents the Secretary
in the interagency process, before Con-
gress and foreign governments, and
with the general public. Finally, OSD
oversees implementation of DOD poli-
cies and programs to ensure they are
consistent with the Secretary's intent.

The office, of course, can perform
other duties as the Secretary prescribes.
Although OSD elements have managed
programs on occasion (for example,
environmental cleanup and nuclear
threat reduction during the Clinton
administration), their track record
has been uneven. More importantly,
managers of programs tend to become
advocates. Program management com-
promises OSD's essential role in policy
formulation, providing an indepen-
dent source of advice to the Secretary.
The office should renew its focus on
policy formation and oversight and
resist the temptation to manage pro-
grams, which is the proper province of
the services. Its oversight should focus
on what a particular program or activ-
ity is accomplishing rather than how it
achieves those accomplishments.

The team also recommends
consolidating all OSD housekeeping
functions into one portfolio under an
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Ad-
ministration. Integrating the Washing-
ton Headquarters Service (currently a

a balance must be struck between
processes that ensure a diversity
of views and processes that create
competing power centers

36 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Murdock and Weitz

field operating agency) and the Execu-
tive Secretariat will give the Secretary
greater control over OSD mechanics.

The search for potential consoli-
dation of OSD and Joint Staff offices
should begin with the role of CJCS as
the principal military adviser to the
President and Secretary of Defense. Al-
though the Secretary would welcome
the Chairman's advice on all DOD
matters, it is not clear that he needs
CJCS to have independent staff on
every issue before the department. On
some issues, the Secretary would be

better served by having a consolidated
staff of civilian and uniformed person-
nel that reports directly to him while
keeping the Chairman informed. In
particular, the team recommends in-
tegrating military and civilian staffs
with respect to managerial functions

and retaining as separate organizations
those Joint Staff directorates that fall
most directly within the Chairman's
military purview.

The Armed Forces increasingly
wage joint and interdependent combat
operations. Yet Operations Enduring
Freedom and Iraqi Freedom show that
DOD still fails to acquire and field joint
interoperable command and control
(C 2 ) capabilities. Therefore, the team
recommends the merger of J-6 (Com-
mand, Control, Communications and
Computers [C 4 ]) with appropriate ele-
ments of the Defense Information
Systems Agency into an indepen-
dent joint task force (with bud-
getary and acquisition authority)
for joint C z . An Under Secretary
for Command, Control, Commu-
nications, and Intelligence (C 3 I) would
be appointed to provide oversight of
this critical area by elevating the C 3
function to the Under Secretary level
and combining it with Intelligence.
For the personnel and logistics func-
tion, J-l (Manpower and Personnel)

and J-4 (Logistics) should be merged
into integrated civilian and military
offices under a military deputy who
reports directly to its respective Under
Secretary. J-7 (Operational Plans and
Joint Force Development), whose re-
sponsibilities have migrated steadily to
U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM),
should be disbanded.

The most significant consolidation
of staffs should occur at the level of the
military departments. The Secretary
of Defense relies primarily on OSD for
the oversight function, not the now-
duplicative service secretariats. The
civilian secretariats and the military
staffs found in each military depart-
ment constitute virtual mirror images.
The team recommends merging most
of them into a single smaller staff that
reports to both the Service Secretary
| and the Service Chief of Staff. Creating
| integrated staffs that pair the Assistant
| Secretaries of each department with a
| military deputy would reduce frictions
!§ from coordination mechanisms, make
service positions more coherent, and
provide clearer lines of accountability.

Allocating Resources
More Effectively

Many critics call the DOD resource
allocation process "the Pentagon's real
wars." Deciding who gets what, and
then making that decision stick, may
be the Secretary's most formidable
challenge. The Beyond Goldwater-
Nichols team approach to achieving
improvements in this area reflects the
guiding principle that resources should
be organized, managed, and budgeted
along service lines. Adhering to this
principle necessitates an elaborate
structure to ensure that the services
follow the Secretary's policy directives
and build a collective defense program
that balances resources across the larg-
est organization in the world. In addi-
tion, the Constitution grants Congress
a fundamental role in allocation with
respect to defense and other policy
areas. Elaborate systems and meth-
ods have evolved within DOD to help
secure congressional funding. Given

the most significant consolidation
of staffs should occur at the level
of the military departments

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 37

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■ beyond goldwater-nichols

these strictures, any system for allocat-
ing defense resources is bound to be
complicated and sometimes inefficient.

Nevertheless, DOD decisionmakers
too often find it excessively difficult to
make tough tradeoffs between services
and across military functions. Budget-
ing decisions remain dominated by fac-
tors other than strategy and planning.
Since the services prepare the budgets,
their priorities rather than joint per-
spectives typically dominate the pro-
cess. Allocating resources that invari-
ably fail to meet all demands requires
Herculean efforts by all involved to
avert the perennial "train wreck" while
preparing the President's budget request
to Congress. The entire process con-
sumes so much time and resources that
DOD leaders can pay little attention to
strategic decisionmaking, policy imple-
mentation, and program execution.

The Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
team appreciates the substantial effort

current DOD leaders have made to
strengthen strategic direction and build
joint capabilities in the resource alloca-
tion process. The changes already intro-
duced show considerable promise, but
additional steps are necessary. In par-
ticular, the team recommends strength-
ening the capacities of the combatant
commands so that they secure greater
influence. The commanders should
play an essential part in defining their
short-term capability gaps as well as
their proposed solutions. In addition,
the combatant commands with global
functional responsibilities should enjoy
a larger role in addressing longer-term
capability requirements. Special Opera-
tions Command, Transportation Com-
mand, Strategic Command, and Joint
Forces Command all have service-like
responsibilities and should act as advo-
cates for the capabilities their successors
will need 10 to 15 years in the future.
Determining the capabilities for a par-

ticular mission requires experienced
analysts. The combatant commanders
need enhanced analytic staffs in their
organic J-8s to compete in this arena,
as well as enhanced representation in
the Pentagon.

The team further favors strength-
ening the Office of Program Analysis
and Evaluation. The office should be
capable of providing independent anal-
ysis to the Secretary on a wide range of
strategic choices, thereby supplement-
ing the options generated by the ser-
vices and the Joint Staff. In particular,
it should conduct an annual zero-based
analysis of two to three joint capability
areas, including rigorous risk assess-
ments. The goal should be to identify
shortfalls and develop decision alterna-
tives for the Secretary.

The Secretary also needs a mecha-
nism for determining how well current
policy is being implemented or current
programs are being executed. Accord-
ingly, he should create an independent,
continuous policy implementation and
execution review process under an of-
fice linked directly to OSD. This office
would assemble all the department's
authoritative and directive guidance
and provide a single, unified statement
of its strategies, policies, and programs.
This process would establish a clear
standard to which all DOD compo-
nents could be held accountable.

Strengthening Civilian
Defense Professionals

Since the Cold War, DOD has had
difficulty attracting and retaining tal-
ented career civil servants. The prob-
lem stems from private sector oppor-
tunities that often offer superior pay
and fewer bureaucratic frustrations,
complex and rigid government hiring
and security clearance procedures that
can take months, perceptions that the
Government is a plodding bureaucracy
where young talent lies fallow, and
a changing labor market where few
workers stick with a single employer
throughout their careers. Although
September 11 and the war on terror
have increased interest in public ser-

38 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Murdock and Weitz

vice, Americans still confront a frustrat-
ing government hiring process. Those
who do become civil servants often
complain of encrusted systems, need-
less hierarchy, and few opportunities
for advancement to senior positions.

An explicit goal and notable suc-
cess of the Goldwater-Nichols Act was
to create incentives for the military's
best and brightest to seek joint ser-
vice, joint training, and joint educa-
tion. Unfortunately, no parallel set of
incentives or requirements exists to
encourage professional development
for DOD civilians or to broaden their
experience base and skill set through
education, training, or interdepart-
mental and interagency rotations.
Whereas the military personnel system
strategically marshals, manages, and
maintains quality officers because it
views its people as assets whose value
can be enhanced through investment,
the civilian human resources systems
of the national security agencies do
not follow this precept. They seem to

lack an appreciation of the deep exper-
tise, institutional memory, continuity
across administrations, and seasoned
perspectives on policies and programs
their civilian professionals provide.

In the face of the coming retire-
ment bow wave and current poor
retention rates for young profession-
als, DOD leaders need to rethink and
reform how the department manages
its career civilians. Congress's enact-
ment of the National Security Person-
nel System gives the Secretary signifi-
cantly broader latitude to reshape the
civilian workforce. He should use these
powers, but he must take additional
measures to attract, retain, motivate,
and reward people.

The Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
team recommends that Congress es-
tablish a new Defense Professional
Corps to attract the best and brightest

civilians to DOD and to expand op-
portunities for professional develop-
ment and career advancement. Like
the Foreign Service, the Corps would
have a competitive entry process de-
signed to identify and entice talented
people considering government ser-
vice. Although most would join the
Corps at the entry level, the system
should allow mid-career professionals
with valuable skills and experience out-
side government to join. Requirements
for advancement should be designed to
develop civilian leaders capable of oper-
ating effectively not only within DOD
but also in the interagency context.
Training, education, and interagency
rotations for senior-level civil servants
should become centerpieces of the new
personnel system.

Like their military counterparts,
DOD career civilians should receive the
resources to enable them to undertake
a sustained program of professional
development. Congress allows the
military services 10 to 15 percent addi-
tional end strength
to create a person-
nel "float” that
provides officers
with opportunities
for training, edu-
cation, and joint rotations. A similar
approach is needed for civilian person-
nel in OSD and the defense agencies to
enable them to meet the professional
development requirements of the new
Defense Professional Corps. Congress
should also reassess overly restrictive
ethics rules to make it easier for de-
fense professionals to move in and out
of government. The Beyond Goldwa-
ter-Nichols team also advocates limit-
ing the number of political appointees
in DOD to enhance the incentives as-
sociated with career service.

Improving Interagency
and Coalition Operations

The past decade of U.S. experi-
ence in complex contingency opera-
tions, from Somalia to Iraq, has dem-
onstrated that success requires unity of
effort not only from the Armed Forces

but also from across the Government
and its foreign partners. In most cases,
however, such unity has proven elu-
sive, sometimes with disastrous results.
The United States and its international
partners have repeatedly failed to in-
tegrate fully the political, military,
economic, humanitarian, and other
dimensions of a given operation into a
coherent strategy.

Goldwater-Nichols did not ad-
dress the organization and functions of
the National Security Council (NSC).
The council needs to play a greater
role in coordinating policy planning
and overseeing policy execution with
regard to regional crises. An enhanced
role would help counter agency paro-
chialism, identify potential disconnects
and synergies, and elevate contentious
issues to the deputies and principals
for decision. The President should as-
sign the NSC Deputy Assistant to the
President lead responsibility for inte-
grating agency strategies and plans and
for ensuring greater unity of execution
among agencies. He should also estab-
lish a new NSC office to review and in-
tegrate agency plans for complex oper-
ations, help close gaps between them,
and monitor their implementation.

Shortly after assuming office,
moreover, each President should re-
view the guidance establishing stan-
dard operating procedures for planning
complex operations. This guidance
should articulate an interagency di-
vision of labor by specifying which
agencies should lead or support others
with various tasks, define the mecha-
nisms and processes used to integrate
interagency planning, and provide a
standard planning paradigm. Each ad-
ministration should build on the les-
sons learned and best practices of its
predecessor.

Weaknesses in other Federal agen-
cies have forced DOD to bear the main
burden of nationbuilding. Enhancing
civilian capacities for conducting com-
plex contingency operations is impera-
tive. The Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
team recommends that all agencies
likely to become involved in complex

enactment of the National Security Personnel
System gives the Secretary broader latitude
to reshape the civilian workforce

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 39

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■ beyond goldwater-nichols

operations abroad (for example, State,
Treasury, Commerce, and Justice) estab-
lish small offices to lead development
of agency plans and participate in the
interagency planning process. For each
contingency operation, the President
should designate one senior official to
take charge of and be accountable for
integrating U.S. interagency operations
on the ground.

Congress should establish a new
Agency for Stability Operations, with
a Civilian Stability Operations Corps
and Reserve, that would prepare for
stability operations; organize, train,
and equip civilian capabilities for such
operations; and have the capacity to
rapidly deploy civilian specialists to the
field. The team further recommends
creating a new Training Center for In-
teragency and Coalition Operations
that would be run jointly by DOD's
National Defense University and the
State Department's National Foreign
Affairs Training Center.

The team urges Congress to in-
crease funding for programs that ex-
pand opportunities for civilian plan-
ners and operators to work with their
foreign counterparts. Such contacts and
exchanges provide critical insights into
partner approaches and capacities re-

garding complex operations. They also
help develop standard operating pro-
cedures for international contingency
planning and coordination. Congress
should also provide additional resources
for programs that enhance the opera-
tional capabilities of allies and partners
regarding complex operations. Ameri-
cans benefit from improvements in the
ability of allies and potential coalition
partners to contribute to operations,
especially in areas where the United
States does not have a comparative ad-
vantage or lacks essential resources.

Strengthening
Congressional Oversight

Defense reform will occur only
if members of the executive branch
and Congress can agree on a set of rec-
ommendations and work together to
achieve them. Unfortunately, congres-
sional oversight of the defense estab-
lishment is languishing. Members of
Congress engage in too few debates on
major national security challenges and
spend too much time on minor and
parochial issues. The defense authoriz-
ing committees today have less stature
and influence than at any time in re-
cent memory. This decline in congres-
sional oversight has contributed to de-
teriorating relations between Congress
and OSD. It also deprives DOD leaders
of the considerable benefits they would
receive from a serious questioning of
their plans, policies, and programs by
members and their staffs.

The team offers the following pro-
posals as suggestions, not recommen-
dations, because only Congress can
reform itself. The study team believes
that congressional oversight would
improve if the Armed Services com-
mittees focused more on "macro" strat-
egy, policy, and organizational issues.
Reducing the size of these authorizing
committees and limiting claims
of jurisdiction from other com-
mittees should also be consid-
ered. Also, it could prove prof-
itable to experiment again with
a 2-year authorization bill. Fi-
nally, members might consider follow-
ing a procedure similar to that used
for the base realignment and closure
process and establish an independent
group (perhaps of former congressional
leaders from both Houses and parties)
to recommend changes in committee
memberships, structures, and jurisdic-
tions that would enhance oversight.

Beyond Goldwater-Nichols,
Phase 2

CSIS formally launched its Phase
2 effort in early May 2004 when the
administrative arrangements for access-
ing its congressional funding were com-

the defense authorizing committees
have less stature and influence than
at any time in recent memory

pleted. To address the broader agenda
of issues, CSIS expanded its Beyond
Goldwater-Nichols study team to incor-
porate additional expertise and formed
seven working groups of former offi-
cials. The Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
working groups held scoping sessions
in June and July 2004 to review how
the study team defined the problem
and its work plans for addressing them.

The first three working groups are
closely interrelated. Working Group

1 identified the U.S. Government ca-
pabilities needed for its most pressing
21 st -century missions: homeland secu-
rity, stability operations, counterterror-
ism, and counterproliferation/WMD
elimination. Once these national ca-
pabilities were determined, CSIS made
recommendations on assigning roles
and responsibilities. Working Group

2 addressed unified command plan is-
sues (for example, the role of regional
combatant commanders in an era of
global missions and global force man-
agements), as well as the interface be-
tween the military command structure
and the Federal Government approach
to conducting foreign and domestic
operations. This latter issue is closely
linked to the agenda of Working Group
3, which focused on improving the
ability of the NSC structure and pro-
cesses to plan and conduct interagency
operations.

During vetting of the Phase 1 draft
recommendations, the most common
reaction to those pertaining to the in-
teragency process was, "Good recom-
mendations, but you need to do more."
Working Group 3 built on the Phase 1
work, including a more unconstrained
look at the structure established by the
1947 National Security Act. The recom-
mendations emerging from Groups 2
and 3, in turn, were assessed for how
they affect the ability of the Govern-
ment to perform the missions being
examined in Group 1. Because of the
close interplay among these three work-
ing groups, participants were invited to
all meetings.

In the belief that decades of ac-
quisition reform have failed to build a

40 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Murdock and Weitz

responsive, efficient acquisition process,
Working Group 4 attempted to design a
new process. Group 5 provided a zero-
based assessment of five commercial-
like defense agencies (for example, the
Defense Logistics Agency). Although
subject to internal controls, the defense
agencies, unlike OSD, the Joint Staff, or
the military services, are rarely subject
to external review. In response to strong
congressional interest, Working Group
6 assessed the implementation of the
Goldwater-Nichols provisions on joint
officer management and joint profes-
sional military education. It also took
a "blue sky" look at more fundamental
issues such as the role of education in
an era when jointness is being pushed
down to the tactical level. Finally, Work-
ing Group 7 addressed whether DOD is
appropriately organized for operations
in the domain of space and cyberspace.

24th

Annual Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff Strategy
Essay Competition

or nearly a quarter of a century, the Chairman has challenged students
at the Nation's professional military education institutions to think
and write creatively about national security issues. The best from across
the military services and Federal Government spectrum compete for
recognition of their efforts in The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Essay Competition.

The 24 th competition was conducted by NDU Press with generous support
by NDU Foundation on May 18-19 at the National Defense University in
Washington, DC.

Even as CSIS launched its Phase 2
effort, it closely monitored the imple-
mentation of its Phase 1 recommenda-
tions. The Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
study team was pleased with the atten-
tion being paid to defense reform by
the senior leadership of the Pentagon.
Despite an extremely crowded policy
agenda, senior civilian and military
leaders, including the Secretary and
Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Chair-
man and Vice Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Chiefs them-
selves, and the Service Secretaries made
time to review CSIS findings and pro-
vide feedback. Both OSD and the Joint
Staff are actively considering which
recommendations the Secretary and
Chairman could implement together
and which the Secretary could imple-
ment on his own authority. The study
team believes that the senior leadership
in DOD, both civilian and military, is
clearly receptive to defense reform and
is deeply grateful for the opportunity to
serve in that cause. JFQ

The report on Beyond Goldwater-Nichols
Phase 2 was scheduled to be available
through the CSIS Web page: http://
www.csis.org in mid-2005.

Judges from participating senior-level schools selected the "best of the
best" to meet the security challenges of the 21 st century. The winning
essays will be featured in the upcoming issue of Joint Force Quarterly,
issue 39, 4 th Quarter 2005.

Be Part of the Silver Anniversary

The 2005-2006 academic year is approaching. It is not too early to begin
preparing for the 25 th anniversary of the CJCS Strategy Essay Competition
in Spring 2006. Look for updates on rules, eligibility, and awards for this
special event on the pages of Joint Force Quarterly or visit the NDU Press
Web site: www.ndu.edu/inss/nduphp.html

Al Qaeda as Insurgency

Lieutenant Colonel Michael F. Morris, USMC
U.S. Army War College

A Goldwater-Nichols Act for the U.S. Government:
Institutionalizing the Interagency Process

Martin J. Gorman, Defense Intelligence Agency,
and Commander Alexander Krongard, USN
National War College

Guantanamo Bay:

Undermining the Global War on Terror

Colonel Gerard P. Fogarty, Australian Army
U.S. Army War College

America's Strategic Imperative:

A National Energy Policy Manhattan Project

Lieutenant Colonel John M. Amidon, USAF
Air War College

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 41

Forum

And when people are entering upon a war they do things the wrong way around.
Action comes first, and it is only when they have already suffered that they
begin to think.

— Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

The Military Utility
of Understanding
Adversary Culture

By MONTGOMERY McFATE

C ultural knowledge and war-
fare are inextricably bound.
Knowledge of one's adver-
sary as a means to improve
military prowess has been sought since

Herodotus studied his opponents' con-
duct during the Persian Wars (490-479
BC). T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Ara-
bia) embarked on a similar quest after
the 1916 Arab rebellion against the

Ottoman Empire, immersing himself
deeply in local culture: "Geography,
tribal structure, religion, social cus-
toms, language, appetites, standards
were at my finger-ends. The enemy I
knew almost like my own side. I risked
myself among them many times, to
learn.'' 1 Since then, countless soldiers
have memorized Sun Tzu's dictum: "If
you know the enemy and know your-
self, you need not fear the result of a
hundred battles."

Although "know thy enemy" is
one of the first principles of warfare,
our military operations and national
security decisionmaking have consis-
tently suffered due to lack of knowl-
edge of foreign cultures. As former Sec-
retary of Defense Robert McNamara
noted, "I had never visited Indochina,
nor did I understand or appreciate its
history, language, culture, or values.
When it came to Vietnam, we found
ourselves setting policy for a region that
was terra incognita." 2 Our ethnocen-
trism, biased assumptions, and mirror-
imaging have had negative outcomes

Montgomery McFate is a cultural anthropologist and a defense policy fellow at the
Office of Naval Research working on an initiative to promote social science research
in the national security area.

42 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Marine Corps (Ryan B. Busse)

McFate

during the North Vietnamese offen-
sives of 1968 and 1975, the Soviet-Af-
ghan war (1979-1989), India's nuclear
tests (1998), the Iraqi invasion of Ku-
wait (1990), and the Shi'ite transforma-
tion of Iran (1979).

Despite the fact that cultural
knowledge has not traditionally been
a priority within the Department of
Defense (DOD), the ongoing insur-
gency in Iraq has served as a wake-
up call to the military that adversary
culture matters. Soldiers and Marines
on the ground thoroughly understand
that. As a returning commander from

the ongoing insurgency in Iraq
served as a wake-up call to the
that adversary culture matters

3 d Infantry Division observed: "I had
perfect situational awareness. What I
lacked was cultural awareness. I knew
where every enemy tank was dug in
on the outskirts of Tallil. Only problem
was, my soldiers had to fight fanatics
charging on foot or in pickups and fir-
ing AK-47s and RPGs [rocket-propelled
grenades]. Great technical intelligence.
Wrong enemy." 3 As this commander's
observation indicates, understanding
one's enemy requires more than a sat-
ellite photo of an arms dump. Rather,
it requires an understanding of their
interests, habits, intentions, beliefs,
social organizations, and political sym-
bols — in other words, their culture. 4

This article argues that new adver-
saries and operational environments
necessitate a sharper focus on cultural
knowledge of the enemy. A lack of
this knowledge can have grave conse-
quences. Conversely, understanding
adversary culture can make a positive
difference strategically, operationally,
and tactically. Although success in fu-
ture operations will depend on cultural
knowledge, the Department of Defense
currently lacks the programs, systems,
models, personnel, and organizations
to deal with either the existing threat
or the changing environment. A Fed-
eral initiative is urgently needed to

incorporate cultural and social knowl-
edge of adversaries into training, ed-
ucation, planning, intelligence, and
operations. Across the board, the na-
tional security structure needs to be
infused with anthropology, a discipline
invented to support warfighting in the
tribal zone.

Changing Adversaries and
Operational Environments

Cultural knowledge of adversar-
ies should be considered a national
security priority. An immediate trans-
formation in the military conceptual
paradigm is necessary
has for two reasons: first, the

military nature °f the enemy has
changed since the end of
the Cold War, and second,
the current operational en-
vironment has evolved fundamentally
within the past 20 years as a result
of globalization, failed states, and the
proliferation of both complex and light
weapons.

Although the United States armed
and trained for 50 years to defeat a
Cold War adversary, Soviet tanks will
never roll through the Fulda Gap. The
foe the United States faces today — and
is likely to face for years to come — is
non-Western in orientation, transna-
tional in scope, non-hierarchical in
structure, and clandestine in approach;
and it operates outside of the context
of the nation-state. Neither al Qaeda
nor insurgents in Iraq are fighting a
Clausewitzian war, where armed con-
flict is a rational extension of politics
by other means. These adversaries nei-
ther think nor act like nation-states.
Rather, their form of warfare, organi-
zational structure, and motivations are
determined by the society and the cul-
ture from which they come.

Attacks on coalition troops in the
Sunni triangle, for example, follow
predictable patterns of tribal warfare:
avenging the blood of a relative (al
tha'r ); demonstrating manly courage
in battle ( al-muruwwah ); and uphold-
ing manly honor ( al-sliaraf ). 5 Similarly,
al Qaeda and its affiliated groups are

replicating the Prophet Mohammed's
7 th -century process of political con-
solidation through jihad, including
opportunistic use of territories lacking
political rulers as a base, formation of
a corps of believers as a precursor to
mass recruiting, and an evolution in
targeting from specific, local targets
(such as pagan caravans) to distant
powerful adversaries (for instance, the
Byzantine Empire). To confront an
enemy so deeply moored in history
and theology, the U.S. Armed Forces
must adopt an ethnographer's view of
the world: it is not nation-states but
cultures that provide the underlying
structures of political life.

Not only our adversaries have
changed. The 2001 Quadrennial Defense
Review predicted that smaller-scale
contingencies — military operations
of smaller scale and intensity than
major theater or regional wars, such
as humanitarian, peacekeeping, peace
enforcement, noncombatant evacu-
ation operations, and combating ter-
rorism — will characterize the future
operational environment. The use of
the military for humanitarian disaster
relief, peacekeeping, and counterterror-
ism operations means that the military
will be increasingly forward-deployed
in hostile, non-Western environments
"disconnected from the global econ-
omy." 6 According to Andy Hoehn, for-
mer Deputy Assistant Secretary of De-
fense for Strategy, "The unprecedented
destructive power of terrorists — and
the recognition that you will have to
deal with them before they deal with
you — means that we will have to be
out acting in the world in places that
are very unfamiliar to us. We will have
to make them familiar." 7

Culture Matters Operationally
and Strategically

Cidture has become something of a
DOD buzzword, but does it really mat-
ter? The examples below demonstrate
three points: misunderstanding culture
at a strategic level can produce policies
that exacerbate an insurgency; a lack
of cultural knowledge at an operational

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 43

Forum

level can lead to negative public opin-
ion; and ignorance of the culture at a
tactical level endangers both civilians
and troops. There is no doubt that the
lack of adversary cultural knowledge
can have grave consequences strategi-
cally, operationally, and tactically.

At a strategic level, certain poli-
cymakers within the Bush adminis-
tration apparently misunderstood the
tribal nature of Iraqi culture and so-
ciety. They assumed that the civilian
apparatus of the government would
remain intact after the regime was
decapitated by an aerial strike, an in-

ternal coup, or a military defeat. In
fact, when the United States cut off the
hydra's Ba'thist head, power reverted
to its most basic and stable form — the
tribe. As a tribal leader observed, "We
follow the central government. . . . But
of course if communications are cut
between us and the center, all author-
ity will revert to our sheik." 8 Tribes are
the basic organizing social fact of life in

Iraq, and the inner circle of the Ba'th
Party itself was the purview of one
tribe, the A1 Bu Nasir. Once the Sunni
Ba'thists lost their prestigious jobs, were
humiliated in the conflict, and got fro-
zen out through de-Ba'thification, the
tribal network became the backbone of
the insurgency. 9 The tribal insurgency
is a direct result of our misunderstand-
ing the Iraqi culture.

At the operational level, the
military misunderstood the system
of information transmission in Iraqi
society and consequently lost oppor-
tunities to influence public opinion.

One Marine back from
Iraq noted, "We were
focused on broadcast
media and metrics. But
this had no impact be-
cause Iraqis spread in-
formation through rumor. Instead of
tapping into their networks, we should
have visited their coffee shops." Unfor-
tunately, the emphasis on force protec-
tion prevented Soldiers from visiting
coffee shops and buying items on the
economy. Soldiers and Marines were
unable to establish one-to-one relation-
ships with Iraqis, which are key to both
intelligence collection and winning

hearts and minds. A related issue is our
squelching of Iraqi freedom of speech.
Many members of the Coalition Provi-
sional Authority (CPA) and Combined
Joint Task Force 7 felt that anticoali-
tion and anti-American rhetoric was a
threat to security and sought to stop
its spread. 10 Closing Muqtada al Sadr's
Al Hawza newspaper contributed to
an Iraqi perception that Americans do
not really support freedom of speech
despite their claims to the contrary,
reinforcing their view of Americans as
hypocrites.

Failure to understand adversary
culture can endanger both troops and
civilians at a tactical level. Although
it may not seem like a priority when
bullets are flying, cultural ignorance
can kill. Earlier this year, the Office of
Naval Research conducted a number
of focus groups with Marines returning
from Iraq. The Marines were quick to
acknowledge their misunderstanding
of Iraqi culture, particularly pertaining
to physical culture and local symbols,
and to point out the consequences of
inadequate training. Most alarming
were the Iraqis' use of vehement hand
gestures, their tendency to move in
one's peripheral vision, and their toler-
ance for physical closeness. One Marine
noted, "We had to train ourselves that
this was not threatening. But we had
our fingers on the trigger all the time
because they were yelling." A lack of
familiarity with local cultural symbols
also created problems. For example, in
the Western European tradition, a white
flag means surrender. Many Marines as-
sumed a black flag was the opposite of
surrender — "a big sign that said shoot
here!" as one officer pointed out. As
a result, many Shia who traditionally
fly black flags from their homes as a
religious symbol were identified as the
enemy and shot at unnecessarily. There
were also problems at roadblocks. The
American gesture for stop (arm straight,
palm out) means welcome in Iraq, while
the gesture for go means stop to Iraqis
(arm straight, palm down). This and
similar misunderstandings have had
deadly consequences.

when the United States cut off the
hydra's Ba'thist head, power reverted to
its most basic and stable form — the tribe

44 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

McFate

On the other hand, understanding
adversary culture can make a positive
difference strategically, operationally,
and tactically. The examples below il-
luminate three key points: using preex-
isting indigenous systems creates legiti-
macy for the actions of the occupying
power, indigenous social organization

(including tribal and kinship relation-
ships) determines the structure of the
insurgency, and avoiding the imposi-
tion of foreign norms will generate
public cooperation.

Recognizing and utilizing pre-
existing social structures are the key
to political stabilization in Iraq. While
U.S. policymakers often seemed per-
plexed by the sub rosa tribal structure
in Iraq, the British understood the in-
digenous system and used it to their
advantage. Brigadier Andrew Kennett,
commander of the British battlegroup

based in Basra, identified a core lesson
learned during their history of empire:
the importance of adjusting to local
cultures and of not imposing alien so-
lutions. 11 In Iraq, the most important
element of local culture is the tribe
and the associated patronage system.
The majority of the population be-
long to one of the
150 major tribes, the
largest containing
more than a million
members and the
smallest a few thou-
sand. 12 Tribes are invariably patron-
age systems in which powerful sheiks
dispense riches and rewards to sub-
sheiks, who in turn distribute resources
to the tribal community. Sheiks always
need money to generate loyalty from
sub-sheiks. There is a saying in Iraq:
you cannot buy a tribe, but you can
certainly hire one. 13 In Amara, the Brit-
ish did just that. They appointed tribal
leaders to local councils and gave the
councils large sums to distribute, rein-
forcing the sheiks' political standing.
As one officer noted, "We deal with

postconflict reconstruction is most effective
when the rebuilt institutions do not impose
external concepts of social organization

what exists. In the five months we've
been here, we're not going to change
the culture of Iraq. We have to work
with what there is." 14

The structure of any insurgency
will reflect the indigenous social orga-
nization of the geographical region.
Thus, charting the Iraqi tribal and
kinship system allowed 4 th Infantry
Division to capture Saddam Hussein.
Although most U.S. forces were preoc-
cupied with locating the 55 high-value
targets on the Bush administration's
list, Major General Raymond Odierno,
USA, understood that relationships of
blood and tribe were the key to finding
Saddam Hussein. 15 Two total novices,
Lieutenant Angela Santana and Corpo-
ral Harold Engstrom of 104 th Military
Intelligence Battalion, were assigned to
build a chart to help 4 th Infantry Divi-
sion figure out who was hiding Sad-
dam. According to Santana, a former
executive secretary, their first thought
was "Is he joking? This is impos-
sible. We can't even pronounce these
names." Despite the challenges, they
created a huge chart called "Mongo
Link" depicting key figures with their
interrelationships, social status, and
last-known locations. Eventually, pat-
terns emerged showing the extensive
tribal and family ties to the six main
tribes of the Sunni triangle: the Hus-
seins, al-Douris, Hadouthis, Masliyats,
Hassans, and Harimyths, which led
directly to Saddam Hussein. 16

Postconflict reconstruction is most
effective when the rebuilt institutions
reflect local interests and do not im-
pose external concepts of social orga-
nization. For example, Iraqis tend to
think of the central government as the
enemy. The longstanding disconnect
between the center and the periphery
meant that Baghdad did not commu-
nicate down and city councils could
not communicate up. The CPA mis-
understood the relationship between
Baghdad and the rest of the coun-
try and imposed a U.S. model based
on central government control. Yet
many Marine Corps units intuitively
had the right approach and began po-

issne thirty-eight / JFQ 45

Forum

■ understanding adversary culture

litical development at the local level.
A Marine captain was assigned to build
a judicial system from the ground up.
He refurbished the courthouse, ap-
pointed judges, and found the 1950
Iraqi constitution on the Internet. Be-
cause he used their system and their
law, the Iraqis perceived the court as
legitimate. Unfortunately, he was in-
structed to stop employing Ba'thists.
It appears that we are often our own
worst enemy.

An Inadequate System

Countering insurgency and com-
bating terrorism in the current opera-
tional environment demand timely
cultural and social knowledge of the
adversary. As Andy Marshall, Director
of the Office of Net Assessment, has
noted, future operations will require
an "anthropology-level knowledge of
a wide range of cultures." Currently,
however, DOD lacks the right pro-
grams, systems, models, personnel,
and organizations to deal with either
the existing threat or the changing
environment.

Socio-cultural analysis shops, such
as the Strategic Studies Detachment
of 4 th Psychological Operations Group
and the Behavioral Influences Analysis
Division of the National Air and Space
Intelligence Center, are underfunded,
marginalized, and dispersed. Because
they lack resources, their information
base is often out of date. Task Force
121, for example, was using 19 th -cen-
tury British anthropology to prepare for
Afghanistan. With no central resource
for cultural analysis, military and policy
players who need the information most
are left to their own devices. Accord-
ing to a Special Forces colonel assigned
to the Under Secretary of Defense for
Intelligence, "We literally don't know
where to go for information on what
makes other societies tick, so we use
Google to make policy."

Although the Army Intelligence
Center at Fort Huachuca, 82 d Airborne
Division, Joint Readiness Training Cen-
ter, Naval Postgraduate School, and
John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School

all offer some form of predeployment
cultural training, their programs are
generally rushed, oversimplified, or
unavailable to all Soldiers and Marines
who need them. Much so-called cul-
tural awareness training focuses on do's
and don'ts and language basics and
tends to be geared toward Baghdad.
As one Army colonel noted, "In West-
ern Iraq, it's like it was six centuries
ago with the Bedouins in their goat
hair tents. It's useless to get cultural
briefings on Baghdad." Troops rely on
personal reading to make up for the
lack of formal training. Inadequate
training leads to misperceptions that
can complicate operations. For exam-
ple, Marines who were instructed that
Muslims were highly pious and prayed
five times a day lost respect for Iraqis
when they found a brewery in Baghdad
and men with mistresses. In actuality,
Iraq has been a secular society for six

decades, and there were relatively few
pious Muslims.

Even though all services now have
a foreign area officer (FAO) program,
the military still lacks advisers who can
provide local knowledge to command-
ers on the ground. The FAO program
is intended to develop officers with a
combination of regional expertise, po-
litical-military awareness, and language
qualification to act as a cross-cultural
linkage among foreign and U.S. politi-
cal and military organizations. Because
few FAOs are ever subjected to deep
cultural immersion totally outside the
military structure, most do not develop
real cultural and social expertise. Fur-
thermore, most do not work as cultural
advisers to commanders on the ground
but serve as military attaches, security
assistance officers, or instructors. The
result is that commanders must fend
for themselves. One Marine general

46 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

McFate

explained that his unit had no local
experts when it deployed to Afghani-
stan. The Pastoo-speaking cook on the
ship, who happened to be born in Af-
ghanistan, became the "most valuable
player" of the mission.

The current intelligence system is
also not up to the task of providing the
required level of cultural intelligence.
Retired Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, USN,

Director of the Office of Force Transfor-
mation, noted that "the value of mili-
tary intelligence is exceeded by that of
social and cultural intelligence. We need
the ability to look, understand, and op-
erate deeply into the fault lines of so-
cieties where, increasingly, we find the
frontiers of national security." 17 Rather
than a geopolitical perspective, threat
analysis must be much more concrete
and specific. According to Lieutenant
General James Clapper, Jr., USAF, the
former director of the Defense Intel-
ligence Agency, "Of course we still pro-
vide in-depth orders of battle, targeting
data, and traditional military capabili-
ties analysis. But we must also provide
the commanders on the ground with
detailed information regarding local
customs, ethnicity, biographic data,
military geography, and infectious dis-
eases." Producing intelligence on these
factors can be challenging. As Clapper
noted, "We provided detailed analysis
on more than 40 clans and subclans
operating in Somalia — far more difficult
than counting tanks and planes." 18

Back to the Future

A Federal effort is needed to infuse
the national security structure with
anthropology across the board. While
this idea may seem novel, anthropol-
ogy was developed largely to support
the military enterprise.

Frequently called "the hand-
maiden of colonialism," anthro-
pological knowledge contributed to

the expansion and consolidation of
British power during the era of em-
pire. In the United States, the Depart-
ment of Defense and its predecessors
first recognized culture as a factor in
warfare during the Indian Wars of
1865-1885, resulting in the formation
of the Bureau of American Ethnol-
ogy under Major John Wesley Powell.
During World War II, anthropologists
such as Gregory Bateson
served the war effort
directly, first conduct-
ing intelligence opera-
tions in Burma for the
Office of Strategic Ser-
vices, and later advising on how to
generate political instability in target
countries through a process known as
schizmogenesis. American anthropolo-
gists produced ethnographies on the
Axis powers that facilitated behavioral
prediction based on national charac-
ter. While Ruth Benedict's 1946 study
of Japanese national character, The
Chrysanthemum and the Sword, is the
best known, studies such as Ladislas
Farago's German Psychological Warfare
(1942) collect dust on library shelves.
Their predictions were often highly
accurate: following recommendations
from anthropologists at the Office of
War Information, President Franklin
Roosevelt left the Japanese emperor
out of conditions of surrender. 19

The legacy of World War II an-
thropology survives in the form of the
Human Relation Area Files at Yale Uni-
versity. Established by the Carnegie
Foundation, the Office of Naval Re-
search, and the Rockefeller Foundation,
this database provided information on
Japanese-occupied former German ter-
ritories of Micronesia. Although the da-
tabase was maintained for decades after
the war with Army, Navy, Air Force,
and Central Intelligence Agency funds,
U.S. Government agencies seeking "an
anthropological-level of knowledge"
have sadly now forgotten its existence.

During the Vietnam era, the de-
fense community recognized that
familiarity with indigenous, non-
Western cultures was vital for counter-

insurgency operations. The Director of
the Defense Department's Advanced
Research Projects Agency, R.L. Sproul,
testified before Congress in 1965 that
"remote area warfare is controlled in
a major way by the environment in
which the warfare occurs, by the so-
ciological and anthropological charac-
teristics of the people involved in the
war, and by the nature of the conflict
itself." To win hearts and minds, coun-
terinsurgency forces must understand
and employ local culture as part of a
larger political solution. As General Sir
Gerald Templer explained during the
Malayan Emergency, "The answer lies
not with putting more boots into the
jungle, but in winning the hearts and
minds of the Malayan people.” Thus,
the U.S. defense community deter-
mined that it must recruit cultural and
social experts. Seymour Deitchman,
DOD Special Assistant for Counterin-
surgency, explained to a congressional
subcommittee in 1965:

The Defense Department has . . . recog-
nized that part of its research and develop-
ment efforts to support counterinsurgency
operations must be oriented toward the
people . . . involved in this type of war;
and the DOD has called on the types of
scientists — anthropologists, psychologists,
sociologists, political scientists, econo-
mists — whose professional orientation to
human behavior would enable them to
make useful contributions in this area. 20

During the Vietnam era, the spe-
cial warfare community understood
that success in unconventional war-
fare depended on understanding in-
digenous, non-Western societies, and
they turned to anthropologists. U.S.
Special Operations Command's Special
Operations in Peace and War defines un-
conventional warfare as "military and
paramilitary operations conducted by
indigenous or surrogate forces who
are organized, trained, equipped,
and directed by an external source."
To conduct operations "by, with, and
through," Special Forces units must
have the support of the local popula-
tion, which can be decidedly difficult
to secure. While he was acting as an

during the Vietnam era, anthropologists
excelled at bridging the gap between
the military and tribes

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 47

Forum

■ understanding adversary culture

adviser to U.S. troops in Vietnam in
1965, British expert Sir Robert Thomp-
son suggested that anthropologists be
used to recruit aboriginal tribesmen
as partisans. Indeed, anthropologists
excelled at bridging the gap between
the military and tribes. Special Forces
in Vietnam, for example, were assisted
by Gerald Hickey in working with the
Montagnards.

So where are the anthropologists
now that the Government needs them?
Although the discipline's roots are
deeply entwined with the military, few
anthropologists are interested in na-
tional security. Their suspicion of mili-
tary activity stems from a question of
ethics: if professional anthropologists
are morally obliged to protect those
they study, does their cooperation with
military and intelligence operations
violate the prime directive? They be-
lieve it does. This conclusion was based
on a number of defense projects that
sought to use anthropological tools in
potentially harmful ways. In 1964, the
Army launched Project Camelot, a mul-
tinational social science research proj-
ect, to predict and influence politically
significant aspects of social change that
would either stabilize or destabilize de-
veloping countries. The effort was can-
celed in July 1965 after international
protests erupted in target countries.
Critics called Camelot an egregious case
of "sociological snooping." 21

While anthropological knowledge
is now necessary to national security,
the ethics of anthropologists must be
taken into account. In addition to di-
rect discussion and debate on using
ethnographic information, policymak-
ers and military personnel must be
trained to apply anthropological and
social knowledge effectively, appropri-
ately, and ethically.

The changing nature of warfare
requires a deeper understanding of ad-
versary culture. The more unconven-
tional the adversary, and the further
from Western cultural norms, the more
we need to understand the society and
underlying cultural dynamics. To de-
feat non-Western opponents who are

transnational in scope, nonhierarchical
in structure, clandestine in approach,
and who operate outside the context of
nation-states, we need to improve our
capacity to understand foreign cultures.

The danger is that we assume that
technical solutions are sufficient and
that we therefore fail to delve deeply
enough into the complexity of other
societies. As Robert Tilman pointed out
in a seminal article in Military Review
in 1966, British counterinsurgency in
Malaya succeeded because it took ac-
count of tribal and ethnic distinctions,
while similar U.S. efforts in Vietnam
were bound to fail because they lacked
anthropological finesse. 22 JFQ

NOTES

1 T.E. Lawrence, quoted in B.H. Liddell
Hart, Lawrence of Arabia (New York: DeCapo,
1989), 399.

2 Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect
(New York: Random House, 1995), 32.

3 Steve Israel and Robert Scales, "Iraq
Proves It: Military Needs Better Intel,” New
York Daily News, January 7, 2004.

4 Culture is "those norms, values, in-
stitutions and modes of thinking in a given
society that survive change and remain
meaningful to successive generations." Adda
Bozeman, Strategic Intelligence and Statecraft
(New York: Brassey's, 1992), 57.

5 Amatzia Baram, "Victory in Iraq, One
Tribe at a Time," The New York Times, Octo-
ber 28, 2003.

6 Greg Jaffe, "Pentagon Prepares
to Scatter Soldiers in Remote Corners,"
The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 2003, 1.

7 Ibid., 1.

8 Baram.

9 Ibid.

10 Christopher Varhola, "The U.S.
Military in Iraq: Are We Our Own Worst
Enemy?" Practicing Anthropology 26, no. 4
(2004), 40.

11 John F. Burns, "The Reach of War:
The Occupation," The New York Times, Oc-
tober 17, 2004.

12 Neil MacFarquhar, "In Iraq's Tribes,
U.S. Faces a Wild Card," The New York Times,
January 7, 2003.

13 Baram.

14 Charles Clover, "Amid Tribal Feuds,
Fear of Ambush and the Traces of the Colo-
nial Past, UK Troops Face up to Basra's Frus-
trations," Financial Times (UK), September
6, 2004, 11.

15 Vernon Loeb, "Clan, Family Ties
Called Key to Army's Capture of Hussein,"
The Washington Post, December 16, 2003.

16 Farnaz Fassihi, "Charting the Capture
of Saddam," The Wall Street Journal, Decem-
ber 23, 2003.

17 Arthur K. Cebrowski, Director of
Force Transformation, Office of the Secre-
tary of Defense, statement before the Sub-
committee on Terrorism, Unconventional
Treats, and Capabilities, Armed Services
Committee, United States House of Repre-
sentatives, February 26, 2004.

18 Lieutenant General James R. Clapper,
Jr., "The Worldwide Threat to the United
States and Its Interests Abroad," statement
to the Senate Committee on Armed Ser-
vices, January 17, 1995: <http://www.totse.
com/en/politics/terrorists_and_freedom_
f ighters/ wrldthrt . html> .

19 David Price, "Lessons from Second
World War Anthropology," Anthropology
Today 18, no. 3 (June 2002), 19.

20 Irving Louis Horowitz, ed., The Rise
and Fall of Project Camelot: Studies in the Re-
lationship Between Social Science and Practical
Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967).

21 Ibid., 47-49, 232-236.

22 Robert O. Tilman, "The Nonlessons
of the Malayan Emergency," Military Review
46 (December 1966), 62.

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48 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

£■

■fe

Transforming
Military Diplomacy

By TIMOTHY C. SHEA

S ince the collapse of the
Soviet Union and concur-
rent with the war on ter-
ror, military attaches have
been fully involved in a wide range of
defense-related activities supporting
national policymakers and combatant
commanders. The political map has
changed in the last decade, increas-

ing the importance of soldier-diplo-
mats serving abroad. Since 1945, the
international system has expanded
from 51 sovereign states to almost
200 today. Ten years ago, the United
States opened new Embassies in 14
countries on the territory of the former
Soviet Union. Each of these newly in-
dependent Eurasian states has emerged

Colonel Timothy C. Shea, USA, is associate director of the Senior Executive Seminar
for the College of International and Security Studies at the George C. Marshall
European Center for Security Studies.

with congealing national and cultural
identities, including a rediscovery of
native languages long suppressed under
Soviet policies.

The fragmentation of Cold War-
era nation-states and the growing
number of failed governments chal-
lenge U.S. diplomatic missions across
the globe. Anti-Americanism and radi-
cal movements directed against the
United States are on the rise. Even
some traditional allies are no longer
reliable. The U.S. military footprint
grows smaller in many regions, raising
the importance of maintaining access
points with countries that are receptive
to U.S. policies before a crisis occurs.
Combatant commanders rely heavily
on the diplomatic work conducted by
Embassy country teams. But a decade
after the lifting of the Iron Curtain,
the Department of Defense (DOD) has
not adequately adjusted to the security
challenges facing the attache corps and
its military-diplomatic mission. This
article outlines how transformation of
the military attache corps will substan-
tially improve capabilities.

Supporting these diplomatic
missions are Defense Attache Offices
(DAOs), ranging in size from an estab-
lished organization comprised of 14
attaches under a general/flag officer in
Moscow to fledging, one-deep opera-
tions headed by Army majors in some
Central Asian and Caucasus countries.
The DAO is the permanent DOD office
assigned to U.S. diplomatic missions.
Headed by the Defense Attache (DATT),
it has complex command relationships
with the ambassador, the combatant
commander, Office of the Secretary of
Defense, the Joint Staff, and the De-
fense Intelligence Agency. The ambas-
sador's country team is a microcosm
of the interagency with representation
by most Federal agencies, all under
the umbrella of the U.S. Embassy. The
DATT represents all DOD organizations
on the country team and manages com-
plex command relationships with all
these elements inside and outside the
Embassy. In most cases, however, the
attache does not have formal authority

U.S. Defense Attache to Sierra Leone providing
information for emergency evacuation of
personnel in Liberia, July 2003

/•

■4£ U.S. AIR

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 49

Forum

■ transforming military diplomacy

over other elements but merely coor-
dinates their activity. The combatant
commander has no direct link to the
country teams within his area of opera-
tions. This flawed arrangement misses
a tremendous opportunity to enhance
interagency coordination.

Other obstacles undermine the
effectiveness of military diplomacy,
such as the prevailing view that an

attache assignment does not enhance
promotion prospects. Unlike many of-
ficers who later became major military
figures of the First and Second World
Wars, few of today's general/flag of-
ficers have served as military attaches.
The relative absence of intelligence
professionals with attache experience
also inadvertently works to diminish
the potential impact of its military-dip-
lomatic mission. The situation is analo-
gous to the Special Operations Forces
(SOF) community before the value of
its unique capabilities, professional so-
phistication, and small numbers was
appreciated by the mainstream military
some 20 years ago.

The transformed military attache
corps consists of three components: a
new attache headquarters at the com-
batant command, a fully manned DAO
that handles all DOD functions and
missions in-country, and an enhanced
operational role for military attaches.
Too much coordination at present
takes place well forward in the Embassy
because the "interagency process" is
crippled at the combatant com-
mand level. It occurs primarily
inside the Beltway or inside the
Embassy. An attache headquar-
ters at the combatant command
in the form of a new directorate
could better reconcile guidance and
policy both internally and with other
Federal agencies to direct more effec-
tive operations in-country.

Especially in light of the recent
Unified Command Plan (UCP) change
moving Russia to the European Com-
mand area of responsibility, it makes
good sense to reassign military attaches
directly to combatant commands. Dur-
ing the Cold War, large portions of the
globe were not assigned to combatant
commanders, necessitating a centralized
headquarters for attaches. Other DOD
stovepipe organizations with narrow
responsibilities managing in-country se-
curity assistance or arms control could

the combatant commander has no
direct link to the country teams
within his area of operations

be eliminated and consolidated with
other duties performed by military at-
taches. Reflagging these billets to more
highly trained military attache posi-
tions will improve efficiency without a
net increase in overall DOD manpower.
This realignment will better accom-
modate the valuable operational role of
DAOs, increase attache access to host
nation counterparts, raise the level of
bilateral cooperation, substantially reor-
der skewed mission priorities, improve
information operations, and streamline
the synchronization of assets in-country
for improved strategic agility.

More than Protocol,

Alcohol, and Cholesterol

The term attache has a significant
and precise meaning in diplomatic
usage. A military officer simply sent
abroad is not an attache; he must be
accorded full diplomatic status and, as
such, is afforded complete diplomatic
immunity. From the beginning, the
military attache was something of a
hybrid in the world of international
relations. He was part diplomat, part
soldier, part scout, and perhaps, as
Lord George Curzon suggested, not en-
tirely welcome. Military attaches were
the Nation's eyes and ears abroad in
the days before satellite photography
and sophisticated electronic collection
techniques. For example, most of the
information about Axis armed forces
before December 1941 came from rou-
tine, tedious, and often unappreciated
peacetime observations by Army atta-
ches. The services sought congressional
approval in September 1888 to estab-
lish a number of Army and Naval atta-
che positions in Berlin, London, Paris,
Rome, St. Petersburg, and Vienna.
Regulations authorized wear of the ai-
guillette, an item of military ornamen-
tation and the international symbol of
the military attache, in 1910. At the
outbreak of war in 1914, Washington
had 23 attaches assigned abroad, and
they had become a regular feature of
the majority of Embassies.

During the Cold War, Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara designated

50 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

DOD (Robert D. Ward)

Shea

a senior military attache in each for-
eign country — the DATT — to supervise
and coordinate the work of all service
attaches. While every military organi-
zation requires someone in charge, the
current system arbitrarily designates
the DATT from the various services to
particular countries. The Army and Air

the primary attache function of reporting
is often considered to conflict with
nonintelligence activities

Attaches are often the same rank, and
even though one may be vastly more
qualified to serve as the DATT, princi-
ples of service equities take precedence
over competence. Selecting the best-
qualified officer would dramatically
improve the effectiveness of military
diplomacy and ultimately force all ser-
vices to develop serious foreign area
officer programs.

The defense attache system struc-
ture, mission, and manning have not
evolved with the changes of the last de-
cade that require increased levels of in-
volvement in operational activity. The
primary attache function of observing
and reporting is often considered to
be in direct conflict with time and en-
ergy spent on other nonintelligence
activities. Intelligence and military-

diplomatic activity are not zero-sum
competing requirements. Narrow spe-
cialization by other DOD elements has
undermined the overall effectiveness of
the military attache by reducing access
to the host nation military. DOD repre-
sentation abroad should be the military
attache. Security assistance and arms
control would be better
managed by trained at-
taches with the requisite
language skills, cultural
knowledge, and regional
expertise. This approach
would eliminate parochialism, reduce
overhead, streamline operations, and
simplify bilateral coordination for the
host nation military.

Transformation of the military at-
tache corps begins at the higher head-
quarters. The nature and function of a
headquarters influence the priorities of
its subordinate elements. By eliminat-
ing stovepipe organizations inside the
U.S. Embassy in a consolidated DAO,
the combatant command headquarters
will need to establish a Politico-Mili-
tary Directorate to manage, deconflict,
and synchronize the activities of mili-
tary attaches. This transformed organi-
zation will integrate national require-
ments for observing and reporting,
supporting operational and exercise
taskings, security assistance, and strat-

egy and policy. More coherent policy
and guidance will enable the military
attaches to apply the informational in-
strument of national power more effec-
tively. Making the director of this new
organization within each combatant
command a general/flag officer with
attache experience will brighten the
promotion prospects for attache duty
and attract higher quality officers.

Realigned Mission Priorities

Security cooperation and the war
on terror have increased the strategic
importance of military attaches serv-
ing abroad. Considering the extensive
actions to coordinate the deployment
of U.S. forces against the Taliban in
Afghanistan and support the train-and-
equip operation in Georgia, attaches
provide a tremendous value to the
combatant commanders as operators
and reporters. Independent of transfor-
mation, they have four main missions
that seamlessly blend.

Advising the Ambassador. Military
attaches must know the host nation
military and strategic environment and
be intimate with the U.S. military's
capabilities to support diplomatic and
engagement measures. The DATT pro-
vides advice on the full range of issues
concerning regional security, to include
the attitudes and intentions of the host
nation and other nations engaged in
regional activities. Finally, most DATTs
also serve as the U.S. defense represen-
tative charged with managing the coor-
dination of administrative and security
matters of all DOD personnel who fall
under responsibility of the U.S. Ambas-
sador. However, this command rela-
tionship would be more effective with
defense attaches assigned to the same
higher headquarters as the other DOD
elements — the combatant command.

Representing DOD to the host nation.
More than playing a ceremonial role,
military attaches are a highly visible
symbol of the Armed Forces. Especially

DOD leaders and Defense Attache in Copenhagen
host meeting with Danish Minister of Defense at
Pentagon, August 9, 2004

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 51

Forum

■ transforming military diplomacy

critical in Eurasia where the Iron Cur-
tain allowed for little interaction with
Americans during the Cold War, they
provide daily access to the host na-

tion military regarding information,
capabilities, and strategies. They are
generally contacted before all others in
a crisis. They serve a large public diplo-
macy function as well.

Reporting conditions in the host
country. Attaches observe military con-
ditions and developments. This is a
continuous mission that must be in-
tegrated into all their activities. To
succeed in security cooperation, poli-
cymakers and decisionmakers require
actionable information. It is often at-
tache input that makes for effective
security cooperation programs. During
periods of heightened tension and cri-
sis, the attache supports the combatant

commander by becoming his eyes and
ears on the scene, responding quickly
to time-sensitive information require-
ments. Increasingly, military attaches
serve as the conduit for
sharing information, espe-
cially in support of the war
on terror. Lastly, corruption
remains a huge problem
in Eurasia, and military at-
taches provide oversight to monitor
whether U.S. resources and funds are
used appropriately.

Managing security cooperation
programs. Worldwide, about half
of all DAOs manage formal secu-
rity assistance programs such as the
International Military Education and
Training (IMET) program and Foreign
Military Financing (FMF). In activities
unique to the former Soviet Union,
the military attache already plays
a substantial role in coordinating and
executing the extensive military-to-mil-
itary programs, exercises, and deploy-
ments, which frequently dwarf IMET
and FMF responsibilities. Even in coun-

tries with security assistance offices,
attaches still make recommendations
on spending priorities and approve
IMET candidates.

Improved Manning Posture

Many DATT positions in remote
regions are occupied by hard-working
but junior majors or senior first-time
attaches with limited choices for their
terminal assignment. Lack of experi-
ence, language skills, rank, or maturity
is not a recipe for success. Many coun-
tries recognize the strategic importance
of their military attaches and send only
their best abroad. Because of the sym-
bolic and ceremonial importance of
f rank, and the requirement for experi-
^ ence and maturity, DATT billets should
1 be filled by colonels (or Navy captains)
^ and represented by the service that
1 logically corresponds to that which
| dominates in the host country. Most
3 importantly, DAOs must have sufficient
1 depth to permit attaches to operate in

? multiple geographical locations.

To what degree is the United States
able to resort to military power with-
out dependence on foreign govern-
ments? The military attache manages
the day-to-day bilateral relations for
national policymakers and combatant
commanders. Transforming the atta-
che corps will substantially improve
the steady state military diplomacy
that must be conducted prior to any
crisis. Changing the status quo will
improve interagency coordination and
provide the combatant commander
the representation he needs within
his area of responsibility. The military
attache corps must adapt to the new
strategic environment, which demands
skillful military diplomacy and knowl-
edgeable professionals. Like the Special
Operations Soldiers who achieved fame
in Afghanistan by demonstrating their
strategic value, military attaches have
the potential to provide significant
returns in the area of military diplo-
macy, while at the same time provid-
ing better reporting on a wider range
of important issues. JPQ

many countries recognize the strategic
importance of their attaches and send
only their best abroad

52 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

31 * Communications Squadron (Bethann Caporaletti)

The joint force, because of its flexibility and responsiveness, will remain the key to operational success in the future. The integration of
core competencies provided by the individual services is essential to the joint team. . . . To build the most effective force for 2020, we
must be fully joint: intellectually, operationally, organizationally, doctrinally, and technically.

— Joint Vision 2020, 2000

Expert Knowledge in a Joint
Task Force Headquarters

By JOSEPH C. GERACI

O fficers receive service-specific educa-
tion and undergo experiences within
their components that provide the
expert knowledge that enables them
to operate in their respective military depart-
ments. Given the Department of Defense (DOD)
emphasis on service interoperability, what addi-

Captain Joseph C. Geraci, USA, is the assistant chief of operations, G-3,
U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, and served as a Joint Task
Force Liberia battle captain at the JTF Main.

tional expert knowledge, if any, is necessary for an
officer to operate effectively in a joint task force
(JTF) headquarters? This article contends that of-
ficers in the grades of 0-3 and 0-4 (captains
and majors, or lieutenants and lieutenant com-
manders in sea services) do not require additional
formal expert knowledge because they receive an
adequate amount during their service component
education. Instead, it argues that informal expert
knowledge in the form of true integration is es-
sential to operate in a JTF headquarters.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 53

■ expert knowledge in a jtf headquarters

Officers in the grades of 0-3 and 0-4 gener-
ally receive little accredited formal joint educa-
tion and have limited joint experience prior to
operating in a JTF headquarters. Those in the
grade of 0-3 typically do not receive additional
joint education outside of their service-specific
primary schooling and usually do not have the
experience of operating in a JTF headquarters
or serving in a joint position identified in the
approximately 9,000 billets on the joint duty as-
signment list. Even though many 0-4s receive
their first phase of accredited joint professional
military education (JPME), most do not have pre-
vious JTF headquarters experience.

This article uses JTF Liberia as a case study to
examine the issue of additional expert knowledge.
This task force is especially interesting because its
joint manning roster consisted of 101 officers,
with 32 percent being 0-3s and 31 percent 0-4s.
These percentages were the highest of any grades
serving in the JTF headquarters. Therefore, these

grades made up the majority of officers, and they
successfully performed their duties, with most
utilizing only the knowledge and experience de-
veloped through their respective service compo-
nent duties and education systems.

JTF Liberia was activated on July 25, 2003,
and was operational until October 9, 2003. Its
mission was to mitigate a humanitarian crisis in
Liberia resulting from civil strife. The headquar-
ters for U.S. Army Southern European Task Force,
stationed in Vicenza, Italy, served as the core for
the headquarters and received augmentation from
all of the service components. At the height of
operations, 5,000 members from the headquarters
in Italy were spread throughout 9 West African
countries or were afloat on USS Iwo Jima in the
joint operations area off the coast of Liberia. The
task force played a crucial role in coordinating the
efforts of a 3,500-member force from 8 member
states of the Economic Community of West Afri-
can States (ECOWAS). To accomplish its mission,

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Air Force (Justin D. Pyle)

G e r a c i

the JTF headquarters also interacted closely with
the United Nations, humanitarian organizations,
the State Department, and an array of U.S Embas-
sies. In recognition of the accomplishments of
the headquarters during JTF Liberia, the Chair-
man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented it the
Joint Meritorious Unit Award.

Expert Knowledge of
the Professional Officer

Armies and navies have existed for thou-
sands of years but did not organize into the pro-
fessional institutions recognizable today until
the mid- to late 1800s. After the experiences of
the U.S. Civil War, mili-
tary leaders recognized
the need to establish the
officer corps as a profes-
sion in order to provide
a dependable Army. Wil-
liam Tecumseh Sherman,
Commanding General of the Army from 1869 to
1883, sparked a professional reform movement by
emphasizing education and training as a method
of creating an officer corps that was "a truly pro-
fessional body."

Social scientists began identifying the military
officer corps as a profession in the mid-20 th cen-
tury. Pioneer studies by Samuel Huntington ( The
Soldier and the State, 1957) and Morris Janowitz
(The Professional Soldier, 1960) both defined the
officer corps as a profession whose members pos-
sessed expert knowledge. Huntington provided the
basis for the theoretical model by which this article
will analyze the JTF Liberia case study as it pertains
to the acquisition and use of expert knowledge.

Huntington states, "The modern officer corps
is a professional body and the modern military
officer a professional man." They are profession-
als because they possess the distinguishing char-
acteristics of professionals — expertise (or expert
knowledge), responsibility (to protect a defense-
less society), and corporateness (self-policing with
a regulative code of ethics). An officer's expertise
is in the field of "management of violence" and
provides him a competence that is common to
all officers — land, sea, and air. The expert knowl-
edge is acquired through prolonged education
and experience.

This article builds on Huntington's model by
further defining expertise as consisting of both
formal and informal expert knowledge. Formal
expert knowledge, acquired through educational
institutions, provides officers a minimum founda-

after the U.S. Civil War, leaders
recognized the need to establish
the officer corps as a profession
to provide a dependable Army

tion to enter into their respective military fields.
It consists of instruction in the form of doctrine,
strategy, and tactics. Officers receive formal expert
knowledge through two phases, according to Hun-
tington: "a broad, liberal cultural background and
specialized skills of knowledge of the profession."

Informal expert knowledge is more experien-
tial and builds on the foundation of formal expert
knowledge. It assimilates officers into specific or-
ganizations and enables them to operate effec-
tively in their assigned positions. It is acquired
through an indoctrination and integration pro-
cess that consists of an orientation to the specific
operating systems, procedures, and idiosyncrasies
of the duty position and organization. Both forms
of knowledge are imperative for an officer to op-
erate in a specific environment. The formal type
provides the foundation, and the informal type
enables officers to apply this knowledge as they
execute their specific duties.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 55

52 d Communications Squadron (Karen Z. Silcott)

■ expert knowledge in a jtf headquarters

Development of the Professional Officer

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(CJCS) has continued the legacy of cultivating
officer professionalism initiated by General Sher-
man by developing the educational requirements
for membership in the officer corps. Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Instruction (CJCSI)
1800. 01A, "The Officer Professional Military
Education," structures
the development of the
professional officer and
provides common edu-
cational standards and
joint learning objectives
for all professional mili-
tary education (PME) institutions. The instruction
identifies areas of emphasis at five military educa-
tion levels: precommissioning, primary, interme-
diate, senior, and general/flag officer. By provid-
ing the educational standards and joint learning
objectives for each level, CJCS has identified the
formal expert knowledge necessary for officers to
begin in their respective fields. This formal expert

with effective integration into
a JTF headquarters, officers can
operate in a joint position with
limited joint experience

knowledge is sufficient for junior officers to enter
a JTF headquarters.

CJCSI 1800. 01A provides educational stan-
dards at each officer developmental stage. Only
the first three phases will be discussed here since
they deal directly with the targeted 0-3 and
0-4 grades. For the precommissioning education
level (service academies, Reserve Officer Train-
ing Corps, and officer training and candidate
schools), PME requires that institutions — as Hun-
tington suggests — provide a broad, liberal arts
education for military professionals while also
orienting officer candidates/cadets to an educa-
tion in basic U.S. defense structure, roles and
missions of other military services, the combatant
command structure, and the nature of American
military power and joint warfare.

During the next education level for officers,
the primary level (for 0-3s), PME institutions are
required to impart specialized skills of technical
knowledge to provide newly commissioned and
junior officers with the formal expert knowledge
for service in their respective branch, warfare,

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

or staff specialties. As part of the primary educa-
tion level, service component PME institutions
provide education covering the following joint
learning objectives:

■ fundamentals of joint warfare, JTF organizations,
and the combatant command structure

■ characteristics of a joint campaign

■ national and joint systems support of tactical-
level operations

■ capabilities of the systems of other services.

The third level is the intermediate educa-
tional level (primarily for 0-4s), consisting of the
service intermediate-level PME institutions, Joint
and Combined Staff Officer School, and service-
recognized equivalent fellowship and interna-
tional military colleges. The institutions at this
level focus on warfighting within the context of
operational art and expand student understand-
ing of joint force employment. During training
at this level, officers in the grade of 0-4 receive
their first accredited joint educational instruction
in the form of JPME phase I. The joint learning
objectives are national military capabilities and
command structure; joint doctrine; joint and
multinational forces at the operational level of
war; joint planning and execution processes; and
information operations and command, control,
communications, and computers.

By providing education to meet the stan-
dards and joint training objectives outlined in
CJCSI 1800. 01A, PME institutions provide officers
with sufficient formal expert knowledge to enter
a JTF headquarters. This education provides 0-3s
and 0-4s with a joint foundation. With the addi-
tion of informal expert knowledge in the form of
an effective integration into a JTF headquarters,
these officers can operate in a joint position even
with limited joint experience.

Effective Integration

Effective integration enables officers in the
grades of 0-3 and 0-4 to operate competently in
the joint arena as part of a JTF headquarters. It is
also critical to the joint reception, staging, and on-
ward movement of units that can meet the com-
batant commander's operational requirements.
Moreover, a deliberate integration process provides
officers with the informal expert knowledge to as-
similate augmentees into the staff quickly.

During JTF Liberia, most 0-3s and 0-4s per-
formed their duties using only the knowledge and
experience developed through their respective
service component duties and education. No offi-
cer in the grade of 0-3 came to the headquarters

with any accredited joint education instruction,
and only 3 percent of those had previous JTF
headquarters experience. No 0-4 who served in
the JTF Liberia headquarters completed any joint
education instruction beyond JPME phase I, and
only 1 6 percent of those officers had previous JTF
headquarters experience.

After these officers were integrated into the
headquarters, they were able to perform effec-
tively while filling essential positions on the joint
manning roster. Key examples were J— 1, Chief of
Strength Management Division (filled by an 0-3);
J-2, Assistant Joint Intelligence Support Element
Chief (filled by an 0-3); and J-3, Joint Opera-
tions Center officer-in-charge (filled by an 0-4).
The officers who filled 0-3 and 0-4 positions
performed duties that proved absolutely vital to
JTF Liberia. That was possible because they came
to the headquarters with sufficient formal joint
expert knowledge and were then integrated.

So what is effective integration and how is
it accomplished? The integration process should
contain an orientation in at least four elements:

■ the current operating situation

■ JTF headquarters joint standard operating pro-
cedures QSOP)

■ command, control, communications, computers,
intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C 4 ISR)
systems — battlespace management

■ capabilities of each service component involved
in the operation.

During the orientation to the current operat-
ing situation, a designated agent from each staff
element should provide an overview from the
element's perspective. This orientation should
cover current and previous disposition of friendly
and enemy forces and significant activities and
present the published orders from both the JTF
headquarters and the higher headquarters. It
should also cover the command relationships
with higher and subordinate units. This orienta-
tion would bring new officers up to date on the
current situation and help them understand the
commander's intent, critical information require-
ments, and the concept of operations. The end-
state for the orientation should be that new of-
ficers have the same operating picture as the JTF
commander and the subordinate components.
The integration process should next focus on the
JSOP for the JTF headquarters.

The JSOP provides guidelines and standard
procedures to help new officers perform their
duties in the joint headquarters. It enables them
to understand how their position relates to other

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 57

■ expert knowledge in a jtf headquarters

personnel and the specific day-to-day duties ex-
pected of them. Such activities may include the
time and format for the battle update briefings;
boards, centers, cells, and working group meet-
ings; shift procedures; maintenance of situation
awareness through periodic staff huddles; and
staff drills for actions ranging from mission plan-
ning and orders production to joint operations
center actions during battle drills. Knowledge of
the JSOP is important because it also shows how
the JTF staff plans, disseminates information, and
communicates with subordinate units and higher
headquarters.

With the advanced technology used in the
JTF headquarters, an orientation to the battlespace
management systems is an important part of in-
tegration. New augmentees must know how to
apply the capabilities of the systems in order to
plan, execute, and communicate with subordinate
units, different staff elements in the headquarters,
and higher headquarters. JTF Liberia possessed
a suite of compatible information management
tools that enabled it to maintain situational aware-
ness, conduct parallel planning, and widely dis-
seminate information.
The C 4 ISR systems fa-
cilitated all elements
of the task force to
share a near-real-time
and commonly shared
understanding of op-
erations. While contractors and technical support
were available to establish and troubleshoot the
battlespace management systems used by JTF Li-
beria, training was required during integration to
enable augmentees to operate and gain maximum
benefit from the systems. The following overview
of the C 4 ISR systems used by the task force high-
lights the importance of JTF headquarters having
an orientation to battlespace management systems
as part of the integration process.

■ JTF Liberia Web page. The JTF Web page
provided a globally accessible and secure means
for users to gain and maintain situational aware-
ness. It also enabled the joint task force to dis-
tribute information widely. Members of the Army
and joint staffs frequently accessed the Web page
for timely information. Each JTF headquarters
staff section was responsible for updating its own
link. The headquarters conducted update brief-
ings to the JTF commander using the Web page
platform in conjunction with secure video tele-
conferencing, which enabled a widely distrib-

with the advanced technology
in the JTF headquarters, an
orientation to the C 4 ISR systems is
an important part of integration

uted audience to maintain a shared and current
understanding of the situation and the evolving
commander's guidance.

■ Defense collaborative tool suite (DOTS).
For collaborative parallel planning, JTF Liberia
used the DCTS routinely. For example, during the
daily commander's conference call, the headquar-
ters utilized it to tie in Special Operations compo-
nents in Europe, Air Force components in Africa,
a JTF liaison officer team to ECOWAS, the JTF
Main in Europe, and the JTF Forward. One Marine
commander used it to conduct a backbrief for his
plan for noncombatant evacuation contingency
operations to the JTF Liberia commander and
supporting components. The real-time capability
of DCTS provided a common understanding
of the mission and the commander's guidance
instantaneously.

■ Global broadcasting system. This system en-
abled the JTF headquarters to transfer high-band-
width files, link the JTF with national and theater
systems, and access real-time feeds — for example,
from unmanned aerial vehicles. It also provided
access to U.S. and international news media.

■ Global Command and Control System-Army
(GCCS-A). The command and control personal
computer (C Z PC), a system of GCCS-A, is what JTF
Liberia primarily used to display deployed forces in
near-real time. C 2 PC displayed forces in a standard
format on any type of map data available from
the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from
1:5 million scale down to 1-meter imagery. This
system gave headquarters a common operating
picture 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The next recommended element of the in-
tegration process is an orientation to the service
components. Even though officers receive a basic
orientation through PME institutions, they need
a more detailed familiarization with the specific
services involved in the JTF headquarters. A rep-
resentative from each service should provide an
orientation ranging from ranks and service-spe-
cific vernacular, to the details of the systems and
units the service has dedicated to the headquar-
ters. This explanation echoes Joint Publication 1
in that "all members of the Armed Forces must
understand their fellow services to the extent
required for effective operations." An orienta-
tion to the vernacular is important because the
services daily use the same words with different
meanings. For example, the Navy uses casualty
for a maintenance shortfall on a vessel, while the
Army uses it to describe a Soldier injured, killed,

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Airman directs members of Fleet
Anti-Terrorism Security Marines
from C-130 in Monrovia, Liberia,

or missing under hostile fire. Also, new officers
in the headquarters must know the capabilities of
the assets committed by each service component.

The joint task force successfully used an in-
tegration process that resembled this proposed
model. As an example of its effectiveness, during
the JTF Liberia experience, a joint planning group
consisting of an 0-3 from each service compo-
nent developed a detailed plan to deploy the JTF

Liberia Forward

new officers in the headquarters must personnel and
know the capabilities of the assets equipment from
committed by each service component Jima before it en

tered the joint
operations area. This was one of the first times a
JTF headquarters was established aboard a Navy
vessel that was committed to another operation
(Iraqi Freedom in the Persian Gulf). The deploy-
ment entailed the JTF Forward leaving Italy on
Air Force C-130s, Air Force personnel in Africa
transloading the JTF Forward from the aircraft
via contracted material handling equipment, and
then Marine Corps CH-46s and CH-53s trans-
porting the personnel and equipment to the ves-
sel just before it steamed into the region. Without
providing junior officers with the informal expert
knowledge in the form of an effective integration,
this complex and detailed plan could not have

been executed as effectively.

Professional military education institutions
provide officers with formal expert knowledge.
Adding informal expert knowledge in the form of
an effective integration brings to fruition Samuel
Huntington's statement that an officer's expertise
provides him with a competence that is common
to all officers — land, sea, and air. Professional mil-
itary educational institutions provide officers in
the grades of 0-3 and 0-4 with sufficient formal
expert knowledge to enter the JTF headquarters.
Of critical importance is the ability of a headquar-
ters to receive the officers and provide them the
informal expert knowledge to be integrated into
the staff. The proposed model contained herein
suggested covering four elements for the integra-
tion to succeed: orientation to the current operat-
ing situation, the JSOP, battlespace management
systems, and service-component capabilities. As
demonstrated by JTF Liberia, it is absolutely nec-
essary to assimilate these officers fully by provid-
ing informal expert knowledge in the form of an
effective headquarters integration process. JFQ

Do you have another point of view? Consider JFQ as
an outlet. See www.ndu.edu/inss/press/nduphp.html for

information on submitting articles and letters to the editor.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 59

NATO

A Deployable Joint
Headquarters for the
NATO Response Force

By MICHAEL L. McGINNIS

A t the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-
tion (NATO) summit held in Prague
in November 2002, the central topic
was how to deal with threats from
international terrorism, hostile regimes, and
rogue states. Recognizing the need for a military
force capable of responding quickly to crises out-
side NATO's traditional area of operations, the
nations voted unanimously to create a standing,
deployable joint task force.

Colonel Michael L. McGinnis, USA, is director of the Systems Engineering
Department at the United States Military Academy.

In October 2003, the North Atlantic Council
stood up the NATO Response Force (NRF), which
will consist of 22,000 to 24,000 soldiers, sailors,
airmen, and special operations personnel when
fully operational in the fall of 2006. The NRF will
provide a credible joint task force capable of de-
ploying within 5 days of a North Atlantic Council
decision to commit forces and conducting "stand-
alone" operations for 30 days. NRF experimenta-
tion through certification in 2006 serves as a cata-
lyst for transforming NATO into agile forces for
new missions ranging from humanitarian relief to
forced entry into a hostile environment.

60 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

McGinnis

This article focuses on two major aspects
related to standing up a new headquarters for the
NRF: transforming a traditional joint staff (J-staff)
into a deployable, flexible organization capable of
planning and assessing effects-based operations
(EBO); and bridging the gap between EBO con-
cepts and putting them into practice.

Command and Control

Command and control of the NRF will
be accomplished through a small, deployable
joint task force (DJTF) headquarters, commanded
by a one- or two-star
officer, and capable of
planning and coordinating
a relatively new applica-
tion concept for conduct-
ing military operations
called effects-based opera-
tions. Command will rotate yearly among three
static parent headquarters: Joint Force Command
(JFC) Brunssum, Netherlands; JFC Naples, Italy;
and a new three-star Joint Headquarters near
Fisbon, Portugal.

The DJTF headquarters (HQS) will serve as
the joint force commander's forward command
post. The headquarters must meet the same de-
ployment and sustainment standards as the NRF
forces and cover the core J-staff functions (J— 1
through J— 9) of the parent headquarters. A ge-
neric NRF command structure illustrates how the
parent headquarters is supported by a three-star
advisory staff representing each service compo-
nent — land, sea, and air — and the liaison rela-
tionships between the three-star advisory staffs
and two-star component commands. The forces
are generated from the two-star land component
command, maritime component command, and
air component command.

Operation Stavanger

Preliminary work to establish a deployable
joint headquarters at JFC Naples involved weeks
of home station planning that produced a draft
document of staff responsibilities and standing
operating procedures. This phase culminated
with Brigadier General Rick Fynch, USA, Assistant
Chief of Staff for Operations, and his staff plan-
ning a 7-day deployment exercise to build the
headquarters team and conduct vignette-driven,
effects-based staff training.

Key assumptions and operational factors
important to DJTF HQS design were obtained
from NATO documents and guidance from NATO

the deployable joint task force
headquarters will serve as
the joint force commander's
forward command post

leaders such as General James F. Jones, Jr., USMC,
Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, and Admi-
ral Gregory G. Johnson, USN, combatant com-
mander, Joint Force Command Naples.

■ The NRF was to demonstrate initial op-
erational capability by October 2004 and reach full
capacity by October 2006.

■ The DJTF headquarters is limited to about 90
personnel assigned to JFC Naples. Operational capa-
bilities include deploying within 5 days of a decision by
the North Atlantic Council; conducting self-sustained,
24-hour operations for 30 days; and covering the J-l
through J-9 staff functions of the parent headquarters.

On February 1, 2004, over 90 military per-
sonnel from 11 nations assigned to Joint Force
Command Headquarters Naples, designated as
NATO's first deployable joint task force headquar-
ters, departed from Naples to Stavanger, Norway,
under the command of General Fynch. The lo-
cation for the deployment exercise was NATO's
new Joint Warfare Center (JWC) at Ulsnes, out-
side Stavanger. According to British Army Major
General James Short, JWC Chief of Staff, the JFC
Naples contingent was the first group to use the
training facility, which was recently converted
from a Norwegian naval station. Modernization
will continue to network and digitize the center
for NATO staff training. In addition to training
headquarters personnel, the exercise was intended
to build team cohesion among headquarters per-
sonnel and engage the JFC Naples staff respon-
sible for providing reach-back.

Challenges to Standing Up

NATO is in the midst of shifting the focus of
its forces from symmetric warfare against the for-
mer Warsaw Pact countries to deployable response
to asymmetric threats across a much broader
range of missions outside Alliance boundaries.
Change is hard under any circumstances but es-
pecially in a joint, multinational environment for
a variety of reasons:

Varying language skills. Although English is
NATO's official language, many individuals as-
signed to multinational staffs have limited Eng-
lish skills. Fanguage differences present serious
communication barriers to transformation and
operational effectiveness.

Disparity in military experience. Each nation
in the Alliance has a unique leadership develop-
ment program. In a multinational headquarters,
rank alone is no guarantee that an individual
assigned to a position has the requisite education
and experience.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 61

■ deployable joint headquarters

National caveats. NATO operations require
significant consensus building. All 26 member na-
tions must be in general agreement on the scope
of operations before the North Atlantic Council

will issue an ac-

ongoing operations have exposed
serious gaps with traditional J-staff
processes for planning and conducting
operations against asymmetric threats

tivation order to
take military ac-
tion. Even after
such an order is
issued, nations
may decline to
conduct specific operations, invoking national
caveats. Claiming these or other restrictions, indi-
viduals assigned to a multinational headquarters
may forego exercises or deployments.

Intelligence sharing, computers, and informa-
tion systems. Successful operations depend on
shared intelligence, clear communications, and
interoperability of computer and information
systems across echelons and headquarters and
with multinational, international, and private
nongovernmental organizations. NATO has not
yet resourced a full suite of interoperable com-
munications, information systems, and support
infrastructure for conducting such operations.

Deployability constraints. North Atlantic
Council consent is required to plan contingency
operations and to take preliminary actions such
as coordinating logistics, lines of communica-
tions, sea- and airlift, and host nation support.
Council restrictions will constrain rapid deploy-
ment of the DJTF headquarters.

Stovepiped headquarters. Ongoing operations
in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq have
exposed serious gaps with traditional J-staff pro-
cesses for planning and conducting military op-
erations against asymmetric threats. Pursuing a
broader range of lethal and nonlethal effects will
drive changes to military headquarters, especially
at the joint operational level.

Time-driven planning process. The DJTF head-
quarters is required to deploy within 5 days of
alert. Time horizons mandated for headquarters
planning are: current operations, 0 to 72 hours;
future operations, 3 to 10 days; and future plans,
11 to 30 days. Time-driven planning over a roll-
ing horizon presents unique challenges that de-
mand proficiency, speed, agility, and flexibility
across all aspects of headquarters operations.

These challenges, mandated operational re-
quirements, and past experience with headquar-
ters design led General Lynch to break with a
traditional stovepiped organization and adopt a
flexible, modular, matrix architecture composed

of loosely coupled cells able to work collabora-
tively to produce joint, operational-level fragmen-
tary orders (FRAGOs).

Applying Effects-Based Operations

After 15 years of dynamic changes to the
global geographical-political-military landscape,
a new set of threats to peace and stability has
emerged in the form of asymmetric drug cartels,
crime syndicates, and terrorist groups that are
often either harbored or sponsored by rogue states.
Asymmetric threats operate outside societal norms
to destabilize, undermine, or compromise legiti-
mate governments through terror, violence, bru-
tality, and intimidation. In operating against these
elements, military forces have relearned the lesson
that an elusive, less sophisticated adversary can
function effectively, even when outnumbered and
overmatched, by circumventing and neutralizing
the size and technological advantages of modern
forces. Effects-based operations are one approach
to countering asymmetric threats that takes a ho-
listic system-of-systems view of the battlespace.

Effects-based operations is not a new theory
of warfare; its principles have been practiced for
centuries. In the era of modern warfare, how-
ever, EBO represents a new application concept
that pursues a higher order of effects beyond the
physical results achieved from applying military
means to military objectives. It offers planners a
way to anticipate, trace, and exploit both physical
and psychological effects of military and nonmili-
tary actions on all systems that make up the bat-
tlespace. However, complex relationships among
societal groups, key persons, systems, decisions,
actions, and means make it difficult to predict ef-
fects and outcomes.

The driving premise behind EBO is to control
or influence the state of the battlespace through
actions that control or influence the systems,
key individuals, and societal groups inside and
outside the battlespace. Its actions are intended
either to maintain the current state of a nation or
its social systems, or to change their state. Desir-
able states typically reflect conditions such as
stability and security while undesirable states are
characterized by disorder and insecurity. Undesir-
able states generally result from deliberate actions
by a nation, rogue state, or group to destabilize a
nation or society, or from gross neglect, abuse of
power, incompetence, poor governance, or a lack
of stewardship by leaders. Effects-based opera-
tions seek either to restore the desirable state or,
in event of a conflict, to dictate conditions such

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

McGinnis

M W

Y '

■ . *-■

H , l . S , V !*• 1

Turkish troops rappeling as the tempo of operations, thereby denying ad-
from helicopter, Exercise versary forces the means, will, and opportunity to
Allied Response 2003 carry out coordinated and effective actions.

A review of the literature yields a substantial
body of research on the theory of effects-based
operations. However, with the exception of ef-
fects-based joint targeting by the Air Force, there
is little discussion of practical aspects of applying
EBO or reorganizing a military headquarters for
effects-based planning at the operational level.
Insights into applying EBO within the DJTF head-
quarters came primarily from four sources:

■ discussions with military strategists, analysts,
and personnel who either were researching EBO or had
recent experience in warfighting headquarters at the
joint, operational level

■ lessons learned from recent warfighting experi-
ments such as Millennium Challenge '02 and NATO
Multinational Exercise '04

■ personal experience with headquarters design

■ General Lynch's experiences operating against
asymmetric threats at JFC Naples and as the Assistant
Chief of Staff, Kosovo Force Main, Kosovo.

Given past professional experiences and fun-
damental principles of effects-based operations
distilled from background research, the authors
developed an iterative three-phase methodology
for applying EBO within the deployable, joint,
operational-level headquarters. Phase I decom-
poses the battlespace into a system-of-systems in
a way that broadens the scope of how military
planners see and understand it. Phase II lays out
how to plan and apply EBO across the full spec-
trum of battlespace systems, using military and
nonmilitary means to achieve higher order effects
beyond those of military means alone. Phase III
focuses on the assessment of effects-based actions
to ensure that operations progress toward the
desired endstate.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 63

NATO

■ deployable joint headquarters

NATO Response Force
change of command,
June 2004

as the exercise progressed,
the product-focused cell
structure forced the staff to
work outside their previous

Maturing the DJTF Headquarters

Operation Stavanger was carried out in four
phases: alert and predeployment preparation;
deployment; battle staff training and after action
review, including senior mentor feedback; and
redeployment. Different aspects of headquarters
functionality were evaluated during each phase.

Metrics for evaluating prog-
ress and success of the de-
ployment are listed below.

Deployment assessment.
Verifying that personnel as-
signed to the DJTF HQS have

headquarters staff experience 12 months remaining at jfc

Naples to be stabilized on
the DJTF team; manifesting and processing head-
quarters personnel for deployment via military
airlift from Naples to Stavanger with no discrep-
ancies; and conducting movement of the team to
JWC Ulsnes without incident.

DJTF HQS staff training assessment. Assessing
English-speaking skills of assigned personnel;
through exercise events, stimulating the staff to
work at least four of seven NRF missions; putting

effects-based concepts into practice by conducting
effects-based planning and assessment; measuring
the time required to complete a crisis action cycle
from crisis event to issuance of military orders;
and publishing a draft DJTF HQS staff standing
operating procedure by the end of the exercise.

Redeployment assessment. Redeploying the
team from JWC Ulsnes without incident.

During the training phase, a series of three
vignettes drove evolution of the headquarters
design, forced maturation of staff processes,
and exercised reach-back with JFC Naples.
These vignettes also gave the headquarters op-
portunities to exercise interoperability, command
and control, communications, and information
systems. In response to each vignette, the DJTF
HQS staff planned contingency operations and
issued FRAGOs based on the commander's guid-
ance while tracking the commander's critical in-
formation requirements, conducting crisis action
responses, developing operational-level decisive
points, and planning stability and support opera-
tions, counterterrorism operations, and demilitar-
ization of local paramilitary groups.

64 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

McGinnis

Between vignettes, the cells refined routine
and crisis action procedures, and the entire head-
quarters conducted after action reviews led jointly
by Generals Lynch and Short. Feedback guided
changes to headquarters design and helped refine
standing operating procedures and information
and workflow models. During the first few days of
the exercise, the staff tended to work exclusively
within assigned cells as they struggled through
the vignettes. As the exercise progressed, the
product-focused cell structure forced the staff to
work outside their comfort zone of previous head-
quarters staff experience. By the final vignette,
the staff was observed working collaboratively
across cells to develop an integrated, synchro-
nized plan for applying military and nonmilitary
means to achieve the commander's intended ef-
fects. The organization evolved from a stovepiped
headquarters to a matrix, information-centric
structure of loosely coupled cells.

USS Mclnerney departing
Rendsburg, Germany,
en route to joining
NATO Response Force,
February 15, 2005

Overview of Headquarters
Cells and Liaisons

The command group supports the com-
mander, manages DJTF staff operations, and en-
sures that the intent and guidance from both the
joint task force and DJTF headquarters command-
ers are clearly communicated and understood.
Command group members include the chief of
staff, information operations officer, political
adviser, legal adviser, public information officer,
and medical adviser.

The Combined Joint Operations Center
(CJOC) serves as the central point of communica-
tions and information management while sub-
mitting and responding to requests for informa-
tion. Other members include the psychological
operations officer, civil and military cooperation
officer, nuclear, biological, and chemical officer,
and component command liaisons.

The Operations and Intelligence Cell com-
bines J-3 operations and J-2 intelligence func-
tions. It manages the battlespace by synchroniz-
ing all military and nonmilitary means, develops
situational awareness, coordinates effects-based
operations with JFC and component commands,
and analyzes friendly and enemy capabilities,
risks, and vulnerabilities.

The Effects Cell develops and analyzes ef-
fects-based plans and coordinates and assesses
effects-based operations. Other responsibilities
include identifying effects and subeffects, recom-
mending metrics for measuring progress and
success, and analyzing and recommending op-
erational-level means (diplomatic, political, in-
formation, military, and economic) for achieving
intended effects and the desired endstate.

The Sustainment Cell coordinates and sched-
ules J-4 operations and host nation support. Other
responsibilities include personnel (J-l), computer
and technical support (J-6), resources and con-
tracting (J-8), medical, terrain, and weather analy-
sis, and determination of sustainment risks for
movement control and protection of main supply
routes and air- and seaports of debarkation.

The Crisis Action Team (CAT) and Joint Plan-
ning Team (JPT) give the headquarters a way to
react rapidly to unanticipated crises that cause a
breakdown in the DJTF headquarters normal battle
rhythm. The ad hoc teams form when the CJOC
transmits a net call to deal with a specific crisis.
The CAT scopes out and bounds the problem,
briefs the commander, and recommends whether
all or part of the crisis should be handled by the
DJTF headquarters and NRF or passed to the par-
ent headquarters. Based on commander's guid-
ance, the Crisis Action Team disbands and a Joint
Planning Team works through the EBO process to
bring the crisis to an acceptable end state. Once
the JPT produces a FRAGO that lays out effects,
metrics, and means, in the form of a course of
action approved by the DJTF headquarters com-
mander, the team stands down.

The Observation, Liaison, and Reconnais-
sance Team provides initial information gather-
ing, situational awareness, and intelligence and

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 65

■ deployable joint headquarters

establishes liaison and conducts initial coordina-
tion of support with the host nation, nongovern-
mental organizations, and private volunteer orga-
nizations prior to arrival of the DJTF headquarters.

Component command liaisons communi-
cate and coordinate orders, actions, and effects
with their respective headquarters. Other key
responsibilities include representing component
force commanders and providing advice and ex-
pertise on standing operating procedures, tactics,
and processes.

The small operational footprint of the for-
ward deployed DJTF FfQS simplifies force pro-
tection and life support requirements for the
headquarters, but also limits capabilities and
functionality to what is mission essential. There-
fore, parent headquarters provide support via
reach-back, including supplying paper and digital
maps, providing operations analysis, preparing
higher-level orders and plans, developing priori-
tized joint target lists, identifying infrastructure
(power, roads, water, sewer), preparing country-
specific studies and profiles of key leaders, and
coordinating and communicating through high-
level diplomatic, political, and military channels.

Accomplishments of the DJTF Team

The initial effort to stand up a deployable
NATO headquarters during Operation Stavanger
simultaneously transformed the headquarters into
a flat, efficient team organized for 24/7 opera-
tions. Conventional staff processes for generating
decisions and orders were reengineered around
the flow of information, making it possible for the
headquarters to prepare decision briefings quickly
and efficiently and produce joint, operational-
level orders. The combination of strong leadership
by senior members of the DJTF team, an aggres-
sive training agenda, and feedback from the JWC
observers/trainers took headquarters proficiency
beyond what was initially anticipated. The head-
quarters also bridged the gap between EBO theory
and application. The deployment to Stavanger,
Norway, also resulted in several NATO firsts:

■ first major training exercise to be conducted at
NATO's new Joint Warfare Center

■ first deployable NATO headquarters to be stood
up capable of deploying within 5 days of alert and
conducting self-sustained 24-hour-a-day operations for
30 days

■ first NATO headquarters to be reorganized from a
traditional J-staff military headquarters into a cell-based
organization for effects-based operations.

Perhaps the most important accomplish-
ment of Operation Stavanger, however, was the
high cohesion the DJTF achieved in the first 48
hours. On arriving at Stavanger, General Lynch
immediately set the tone for the week by delay-
ing the start of training so he could clearly com-
municate the goals of the exercise to all DJTF
members and JWC observers/trainers. He also set
aside time the first evening for the team to social-
ize. Training was again delayed the next morning
for a group meeting where all 90 members of the
DJTF team from 11 nations stood up in front of
the group and, in English, introduced themselves
and gave their military backgrounds. The intro-
ductions were the first time many had spoken
before a large body, and they later said it made
them feel more "connected." The socialization
and introductions were the beginning of trust re-
lationships. By the end of the week, the team had
become a highly cohesive unit. The camaraderie
and enthusiasm were never more evident than at
the end of the flight back from Stavanger, when
General Lynch stood at the bottom of the stairs
and shook hands with everyone who deplaned.
The enthusiastic, backslapping goodbyes on the
tarmac demonstrated the collective spirit. And
observations and lessons learned were plentiful.

Information bottlenecks not eliminated. Al-
though the headquarters made only modest prog-
ress at reducing information queues and technol-
ogy related bottlenecks, the flat, modular cell
structure demonstrated superb agility throughout
the exercise in responding to both routine and
crisis actions.

Improved information flow. Restructuring the
headquarters cell structure around the flow of
information improved that flow, which improved
decisionmaking. By the end of the exercise, deci-
sion cycle time from crisis to communication of
orders was improved by over 25 percent, reducing
the time from 12 to between 8 and 10 hours.

Transformation takes time. Maturing staff pro-
cesses and liaisons with parent and component
commands will require time and training. A sig-
nificant breakthrough in efficiency will call for
headquarters at all levels to fully integrate mod-
ern information, computer, and communications
technologies and to adopt an enterprise approach
to information and workflow processes.

Value-added products and services. As an inter-
mediate headquarters, the DJTF HQS adds value by
delivering timely, useful products and services to
component commands. Examples include analysis
that connects the dots by providing insights into,

66 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

McGinnis

and anticipation of, enemy intents, capabilities,
and vulnerabilities; developing a complete and ac-
curate effects-based picture of the battlespace; and
producing orders that coordinate and synchronize
the efficient, effective use of joint assets to accom-
plish effects-based operations.

Selecting the right people and stabilizing the
team. Progress made during Operation Stavanger
confirms that creating a deployable, multina-
tional joint task force headquarters is an attain-
able goal. However, sustaining the headquarters
will be a challenge. NATO nations must acknowl-
edge that NRF missions place unique demands
on the DJTF team and assign personnel to the
headquarters with the knowledge, experience,
and communication skills to:

■ conduct effects-based operations

■ conduct regular training to develop and main-
tain the expertise required of a combined, joint, opera-
tional-level headquarters

■ synchronize assignments with operational re-
quirements, stabilizing personnel for a full tour so that
once trained, the team remains together throughout the
operational phase.

Operation Stavanger helped transform the
DJTF team into an adaptive, innovative learning
organization. NATO must develop new strategies
for educating and for developing and conducting
the individual and collective staff training neces-
sary to continue this mission.

Headquarters staff at all levels must become
technically competent at using information tech-
nologies, data management mining techniques,
computer simulation models, and communica-
tions technologies to support planning, analyzing,
and assessing effects-based operations.

The DJTF headquarters is by no means fully
trained at effects-based operations, nor is it yet
able to plan the full range of EBO. Nevertheless,
in the exercise the headquarters clearly estab-
lished a baseline capability for EBO. The team
will refine information and product flow as well
as staff responsibilities and battle rhythm. Les-
sons learned from Operation Stavanger will be in-
corporated into future DJTF headquarters designs
and will help Allied Command Transformation in
Norfolk, Virginia, to develop new NRF doctrine.

Dynamic Action '04 in March 2004 at JFC
Naples focused on refining standing operating
procedures, exercising reach-back with the parent
headquarters, and maturing liaison with compo-
nent commands. In April, the deployable joint
task force headquarters conducted a no-notice

deployment exercise to an undisclosed location
to test deployment procedures and verify deploy-
ability of personnel assigned to the headquar-
ters. Allied Action '04 in late May and early June
forward deployed the headquarters to Persona,
Italy, to conduct a major exercise leading to ini-
tial operating capability in October. Building on
progress made thus far will ensure that NATO
fields a capable operational force for meeting its
broader goals of fostering military cooperation
among member nations and strengthening joint,
international planning for the common defense
of the Alliance. JFQ

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 67

E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System
(JSTARS), an airborne battle management and command
and control platform that conducts ground surveillance

The value of information exists in time since information most often describes fleeting conditions.
Most information grows stale with time, valuable one moment but irrelevant or even misleading
the next.

— Marine Corps Doctrine Publication 6

Expeditionary Airborne
Battlespace Command
and Control

By PAUL DOLSON

Paul Dolson is developing command and control architecture concepts in Lincoln Laboratories at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

68 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

D o I s o n

T hroughout history, combatants have
sought an advantage over their adver-
saries in large part by achieving some
degree of information superiority.
They have sought greater knowledge of enemy
troop dispositions, preparedness, intentions, and
weapons, all the while concealing similar infor-
mation about themselves. Always, the advantage
such knowledge afforded was ephemeral; com-
manders had to act rapidly, while the informa-
tion was still relevant and the advantage still
existed. Always, speed of command and action
has been critical to a military's ability to seize and
maintain the advantage. And always, exploiting
such an advantage has required a force capable of
moving with enough speed, agility, surprise, and
lethality to create a rapidly deteriorating situation
with which an adversary could not cope — the es-
sence of maneuver warfare.

Today, the U.S. military enjoys a tremendous
advantage in terms of rapid and reliable commu-
nications technology as well as in advanced intel-
ligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)

capabilities. Yet unlike many of the technological
developments exploited in past wars, developed
largely by or for the military, today's advances are
predominantly the result of commercial enter-
prise and are available to virtually anyone with
the resources to purchase them and the where-
withal to use them. As a result, the advantage af-
forded U.S. forces by information superiority will
become even more fleeting. That fact, particularly
in light of the quicker, lighter, more mobile,
and more lethal forces envisioned by Joint Vision
2020 and the vision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
for joint operational concepts, leaves little doubt
that speed of command will become increasingly
important in future conflicts.

This article suggests that within its com-
mand and control (C z ) doctrinal precepts and
architecture, both current and proposed, the Air
Force will find it difficult to integrate seamlessly
within and become an indigenous part of a trans-
formed future dominant maneuver force. Further-
more, it suggests that forward air control — com-
manding from the front rather than the rear — is
an enduring principle of airpower. The airborne
battlefield command and control center (ABCCC)
was more than a flying radio relay platform or a
long loiter forward air controller (FAC); it was a
g forward air command element engaging in ma-
lt neuver warfare.

Background

As they get further and further away from a war they
have taken part in, all men have a tendency to make
it more as they wish it had been rather than how it
really was.

— Ernest Hemingway

The ABCCC was originally developed in the
1960s during the Southeast Asia conflict. The re-
quirement for such a capability resulted from the
unique characteristics of the counterinsurgency
and unconventional warfare operations encoun-
tered in Southeast Asia. According to one declas-
sified report, "Control of ground areas fluctuated;
clear-cut battle lines were usually nonexistent;
[andj air operations were not conducted solely
in South Vietnam." Flexibility and the ability
to make quick command decisions to respond
to rapidly changing tactical situations were key
elements of the ABCCC concept of operations.
Continued the report, "The heart and soul of the
air effort in Laos and the reason for any success
achieved was largely attributable to the forward
air control team consisting of an ABCCC and

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 69

■ airborne command and control

F-16s testing interoperability upgrades
with NATO Airborne Warning and
Control System aircraft

FAC." The Vietnam experience demonstrated the
value added by the ABCCC's ability to provide
more responsive and reliable close air support
(CAS) to ground forces. More importantly, it also
demonstrated how greater speed of command can
contribute to the efficacy of airpower by identify-
ing and exploiting fleeting opportunities when
they appear on the battlefield.

The ABCCC was a vital link in the battlespace
C z chain during Operation Desert Storm. From

January 16 to February

the airborne battlefield command
and control center was a forward
air command element engaging
in maneuver warfare

28, 1991, the EC-130E
flew 201 sorties, provid-
ing an almost constant
command and control
presence. Because the
ABCCC was airborne,
it was able to communicate with and manage
tactical forces operating beyond the normal com-
munications coverage of other tactical air con-
trol system elements, such as the Air Support

Operations Center and the Control and Report-
ing Center. "The mobility and communications
advantage inherent in the Airborne Battlefield
Command and Control Center platform enabled
it to stay abreast of the current ground and air
situation within its assigned area of responsibil-
ity." Among the conclusions and lessons learned
from a command and control perspective was
that "ABCCC battlestaff could indeed serve as
the joint force commander's on-the-scene, air-to-
ground battle managers, allocating CAS to the
most lucrative targets."

During operations in Kosovo, the ABCCC
once again provided a key command and control
link helping North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO) air commanders to manage air support
for Operation Allied Force. Kosovo illustrated
the tremendous complexity of managing the
battlespace and performing real-time targeting
in urban environments. Even in the absence of
significant ground forces and the resultant low

70 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Air Force (Tom Reynolds)

D o I s o n

CAS requirements, Kosovo demonstrated that
the combined forces air component commander
needed an on-the-scene command presence. The
elusiveness of the Serbian forces further compli-
cated an already daunting NATO targeting pro-
cess. Finding and striking them proved difficult
and was exacerbated by the distances involved
for the strike aircraft, which resulted in shorter
target area loiter times and less time to locate and
strike targets. Had the United States not possessed
an ABCCC, the targeting information the strik-
ers and FACs had to work with would have been
only as good as the location information they
had when they took off. The ABCCC was able to
relay critical targeting information in real time
between the Combined Air Operations Center
(CAOC) in Vicenza, Italy, and the airborne FACs
and strike aircraft in the Balkans, providing an
increased combat effectiveness that otherwise
would not have existed.

In the two most recent operations involving
U.S. forces, the EC-130E ABCCC platform was
not available. The Air Force had retired it in 2002
on the premise that the CAOC would have suffi-
cient communications resources to exercise com-
mand and control over vast distances in a widely
distributed battlespace. In the absence of an
ABCCC, the airborne warning and control system
(AWACS) and joint surveillance and target attack
radar system (JSTARS) had to fulfill the battlefield
In the cockpit of management role. This led to problems, both real

upgraded U-2 and perceived, in providing air support to ground

reconnaissance plane forces in a widely distributed battlespace.

For example, Afghanistan presented a num-
ber of problems to commanders during Opera-
tion Enduring Freedom, a truly distributed series
of combat operations. The air war was run from
the CAOC at Prince Sultan Air Base, Saudi Ara-
bia; the ground operations were controlled from
Kandahar, Afghanistan; and supporting aircraft
came predominantly from 479 th Air Expedition-
ary Wing at A1 Udeid Air Base in Qatar, joined
occasionally by aircraft participating in Opera-
tions Northern and Southern Watch. These distrib-
uted operations led to coordination problems
between air and ground forces that were exacer-
bated by the absence of an ABCCC. Because of
the tremendous distances involved, the CAOC
could neither communicate directly with, nor
provide command and control to, many aircraft
in the Afghanistan theater. As a result, AWACS
crews pulled double duty, providing deconfliction
and radar control to aircraft transiting the air-
space while simultaneously responding to numer-
ous requests for CAS. Providing command and
control and establishing communications with
battlespace participants proved difficult. There
were instances of preplanned strike aircraft flying
through the formation of aircraft attempting to
support ground forces.

During Operation Anaconda, crews flying in
AWACS were overwhelmed by requests for CAS.
According to one account, "Without ABCCC to
sort through the CAS requests and prioritize the
missions of strike aircraft . . . officers flying in E-3
AWACS aircraft and working from the CAOC strug-
gled to sort out dozens of urgent requests from
troops under fire." The incident at Tarnak Farms,
in which an F-16 inadvertently attacked Canadian
forces while they were conducting a live-fire exer-
cise, demonstrated the potential for tragedy in a
dynamic and widely distributed theater.

The resounding success of Iraqi Freedom
might lead one to believe the military is right
where it needs to be in terms of command and
control; however, air support to the rapidly mov-
ing and widely distributed ground forces again
proved problematic. In its after-action report, 3 d
Infantry Division complained of inadequate co-
ordination between air support and their ground
operations. Because of the tremendous speed of
its movement and the lack of both responsive
"on the scene" air command and control and a
reliable means of relaying radio communications,
there were cases of airstrikes in the 3 d Infantry Di-
vision area of control. In one instance, an F-15E
mistook a multiple launch rocket system for a

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 71

■ airborne command and control

surface-to-air missile battery, killing three and
wounding six Soldiers. The Marines also encoun-
tered problems coordinating ground support in
the absence of the ABCCC. Their solution was to
reconfigure several of their KC-130s to be used as
airborne Direct Air Support Centers.

Although AWACS and JSTARS performed
admirably in their respective design roles, as an

ad hoc ABCCC

in the Afghanistan theater, there were
instances of preplanned strike aircraft
flying through the formation of aircraft
attempting to support ground forces

they were not
as effective as
the Air Force
hoped. While
both did well
with kill boxes,

each had difficulty responding rapidly to changes
and opportunities in the battlespace, and CAS op-
erations quickly overwhelmed them. Their ability
to control kill boxes, however, did not demon-
strate their ability to fulfill the ABCCC role. In
fact, kill boxes represent a compromise, in terms
of fire support coordination measures, between
what the ground forces need to support an agile
and fluid scheme of maneuver and what the Air
Force can provide in real time. While kill boxes
can be useful emergency or back-up fire support
coordination measures, routine reliance on them
acknowledges the continuing difficulty the Air
Force has integrating into a rapidly moving joint
maneuver force and with providing proactive
real-time command and control of airborne the-

ater attack assets. The problems experienced were
by no means a result of poor performance on the
part of AWACS or JSTARS but rather a reflection of
their disparate primary missions with respect to
that of the ABCCC. JSTARS is predominantly an
ISR platform, and when conflicts arose between
its primary function and secondary functions — in
this case coordinating CAS — the primary role won
out. In the permissive air environment of Iraq,
AWACS had only to deconflict airspace, not track
air threats. However, had there been an air threat,
it too would have had to prioritize its primary
mission over assisting with CAS. In addition to
not having a real battlefield C 2 capability, neither
aircraft had an ideal communications relay capa-
bility to support rapidly changing situations on
the ground.

Defining the Problem

In his later years Pablo Picasso was not allowed to
roam an art gallery unattended, for he had previously
been discovered in the act of trying to improve on one
of his old masterpieces.

— Unknown

Although much of the discussion in the af-
termath of Afghanistan and Iraq has focused on
problems with CAS, those problems are actually a
symptom of a much larger issue — command and
control — and what was really missing was the on-
scene eyes and inherent flexibility of command
and control that the ABCCC brought to the fight.
In a College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and
Education report, Robyn Read uses the operations
in Afghanistan to illustrate the shortfalls of CAS
in a "non-linear attack mode" within the context
of "small wars." Although much of his discussion
deals primarily with the shortcomings of CAS
operations, these shortcomings are a symptom of
a larger problem: the inability of airpower, within
the current doctrinal precepts and C z architecture,
to integrate effectively within an agile, fast-mov-
ing, nonlinear, joint force scheme of maneuver.
In any event, one would certainly have to agree
with his assertion that:

air battle command and control were critical elements
for CAS in the past but fell out of favor and into rela-
tive disuse for a variety of institutional reasons. In a
sort of "back to the future" logic, we need to dig into
the CAS problem and reenergize the "old" parts that
worked and update those teclmologies and doctrine that
are insufficient or inadequately tailored to this mission.

72 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

D o I s o n

U.S. Air Force (Robert J. Horstman)

Ground crew moving
NKC-135 equipped
with infrared signature
technology

While technology has provided the military
with dramatically improved warfighting capa-
bilities, fully realizing and exploiting these capa-
bilities requires that future forces become more
inherently joint. They must be born joint. They
must be network-centric and capable of seamlessly
integrating to form a combined-arms, dominant-
maneuver force that thinks and acts as one. Future
operations will be characterized by light, mobile,
networked forces moving rapidly and simulta-
neously from several different axes in a widely
distributed theater of operations; lethal attacks on
selectively engaged targets with high probability of
success; fewer casualties and less collateral damage;
and a better-informed force able to prosecute war
at higher levels of effectiveness and lower levels of
violence. With the technologies available today, as
well as those on the near horizon, the net-centric,
dominant-maneuver forces envisioned in Joint
Vision 2020 are within reach. These technologies

will enable the military to act with greater speed,
agility, and a more measured and precise lethality;
however, they will also dramatically complicate
battlespace command and control.

The fundamental challenges facing the com-
mand and control of a net-centric, dominant-
maneuver force are related to two broad areas:
communications technology and C z doctrine or
philosophy. First, a net-centric force would re-
quire a fast, reliable network that is secure and
accessible to all participants in the battlespace.
Second, the C 2 architecture and procedures used
by these net-centric forces must be rapidly re-
sponsive to changes and fleeting opportunities
within the battlespace. Ultimately, to obtain and
sustain information superiority, and to achieve
dominant maneuver, the myriad activities and
communications taking place within the modern
battlespace must be constantly integrated and
acted on in real time.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 73

■ airborne command and control

E-8C JSTARS aircraft arrives
at Robins Air Force Base

A good deal of effort is being directed toward
the technological challenges of net-centric warfare,
such as the DOD Global Information Grid (GIG),
the Air Force C z Constellation, and the Army's

digital battlefield

future operations will be characterized concept. The

by light, mobile, networked forces GIG 1S a 8 loball y

. interconnected

moving rapidly and simultaneously end-to-end set

from several different axes of information

capabilities, as-
sociated processes, and personnel for collecting,
processing, storing, disseminating, and managing
information on demand to warfighters, policy-
makers, and support personnel. The C z Constel-
lation is a network of systems that will tie into
the GIG and create a battlespace information
and data sharing network. The Army program is
intended to network forces in the field and push
information and C z responsibilities down to the
brigade and lower levels to create a more dynamic
and agile maneuver and assault capability.

In terms of C z philosophy, the Army is mov-
ing toward greater information sharing and au-
tonomy at the operational and tactical levels. The
Army interpretation of power to the edge includes
not only making necessary data and information
accessible at the brigade and lower levels but
also providing greater autonomy for field com-
manders. The Air Force, on the other hand, views
power to the edge as more of a technical, infor-

mation-sharing issue, such as data transfer capa-
bility from sensor to shooter, or even sensor to
weapon, using machine-to-machine communica-
tions while retaining and executing C z functions
from a central, geographically separated CAOC,
perhaps even from the continental United States.
At the strategic level and for real-time command
and control of a Global Strike Task Force, this
approach makes tremendous sense. At the the-
ater operational and tactical levels, however, it is
impractical. Although the CAOC can maintain
general situational awareness through a globally
networked C Z ISR architecture, it cannot commu-
nicate directly with battlespace participants, nor
can it direct theater aircraft that will be acting as
an integral element of a fluid and agile dominant
maneuver force — moving and operating in com-
plete concert with ground forces.

Expeditionary Airborne
Command and Control

Commanders who do not empower the staff to act on
their behalf will become prisoners in their own head-
quarters, out of touch with reality and limited in their
ability to influence events.

— Marine Corps Doctrine Publication 6

Since the Air Force will usually fight as part of
a joint combined arms team, it should reexamine
the concept of forward, decentralized airborne
command and control and investigate the pos-

74 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Air Force

D o I s o n

sibilities of an Expeditionary Airborne Battlespace
Command and Control Center (EABCCC). While
it is essential that the Air Force exploit technol-
ogy to save money and resources and reduce its
forward footprint, the footprint cannot be entirely
eliminated. As Robyn Read suggested, the Air

Force should reen-
ergize the ABCCC
concept. It should
abandon the ele-
ments that are no
longer relevant, but
it shouldn't "throw
the baby out with
the bath water." It must address the challenges of
speed of command within a nonlinear, fast-paced
modern battlespace. It should update the tech-
nology and doctrine that are inadequate for the
modern battlespace and develop new interoper-
able technologies and C z doctrine that will better
integrate airpower within a combined arms, domi-
nant-maneuver force at the tactical level.

In addition to providing a forward senior air
command presence, an EABCCC may also require
a self-contained "roll-off” communications ca-
pability (capsule) to serve as a secure and stable
means to tie into the GIG. Today, commercial
carriers provide 95 percent of all transmission
services and infrastructure for the GIG. Unfor-
tunately, they tend to view network security as
business, which is not always the same as security
for military operations. Net-centric forces that
rely on smooth and continuous push-pull infor-
mation sharing cannot afford to be disconnected
by an asymmetric computer network attack on
some link in the grid. Having their own mobile
hub could provide greater isolation and ensure
forward commanders have uninterrupted, secure
connectivity with their forces as well as reliable
reach-back to rear area headquarters elements and
associated joint collaborative planning and com-
munications resources. A mobile capsule could
act as the hub of a battlespace-wide area network.

Once the capsule has been offloaded,
the EABCCC aircraft could then act as the air-
borne beyond-line-of-sight trunk completing the
battlespace-wide area network and would need
the capability to fuse data from theater and na-
tional ISR assets, as well as ground force-devel-
oped information, to develop and promulgate a
common relevant battlespace picture to all par-
ticipants to include blue and red force tracking.
In this capacity, an EABCCC would be a critical
component of a commander's ability to maintain

net-centric forces that rely on
smooth and continuous push-pull
information sharing cannot afford
to be disconnected by an asymmetric
computer network attack

constant battlespace awareness and to exploit
fleeting opportunities through the rapid applica-
tion of airpower.

Remaining Questions

Whoever can make and implement his decisions con-
sistently faster gains a tremendous, often decisive ad-
vantage. Decision making thus becomes a time-com-
petitive process, and timeliness of decisions becomes
essential to generating tempo.

— Fleet Marine Force Manual 1

The problems experienced in recent opera-
tions, which were at least in part attributable
to the absence of an ABCCC, were overcome in
many instances by ingenuity and, in some cases,
luck. Nevertheless, the consensus among the ser-
vices is that future operations will require some
sort of ABCCC capability. Should an EABCCC
include a forward air operations control team
to provide tactical and operational level C z , or
should it just be an airborne line-of-sight commu-
nications relay and beyond-line-of-sight gateway?
Should it include a mobile capsule to serve as a
battlespace-wide area network trunk and hub for
reliable GIG connectivity? Should the Air Force
move a senior command element forward to lead
joint maneuver forces in conjunction with the
forward senior ground commander? These are
just some questions that should be addressed in
coming years. Which of these concepts or tech-
nologies will prevail remains to be seen.

Despite their apparent differences, there is
one sustaining idea within the Army and Air
Force programs and philosophy of decentralized
C z — the need for a reliable gateway to link the
various elements of the network via line-of-sight
communications and to act as the bridge and
wideband beyond-line-of-sight trunk to the GIG.
By separating the doctrinal differences of C z from
the technical, the Department of Defense can
move forward to find the solutions necessary to
support a transformed warfighting philosophy.
Through joint experimentation, it can employ a
"try it before you buy it” strategy to explore not
only potential technology solutions, but doctrinal
employment solutions as well. One thing seems
certain: as the military transforms to a lighter,
more mobile expeditionary force, the need for a
more agile and responsive theater air C z structure
will increase. JTQ

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 75

U.S. Navy (Nathanael T. Miller)

Chinese and American
Network Warfare

By TIMOTHY L. THOMAS

C hina published a fourth version of its
white paper on national defense in De-
cember 2002. 1 The document received
positive comments from U.S. analysts
for its greater sophistication than previous ver-
sions and mild criticism for its continued lack of
detail. Subjects addressed included China's secu-
rity situation, defense policy, armed forces, inter-
national security cooperation, and arms control
and disarmament. But there was a noticeable lack
of attention to information warfare (IW) and infor-
mation operations (IO), subjects to which the con-
gressionally mandated DOD study, "The Military
Power of the People's Republic of China," paid

Timothy L. Thomas is assigned to the Foreign Military Studies Office
at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

particular attention in 2002. 2 In addition, China's
2004 white paper failed to address IW but focused
on the revolution in military affairs and the topic
of informationalization, which was mentioned
more than 20 times.

This 2002 white paper, however, did note that
information technologies (IT) have helped stretch
the battlefield into "multidimensional space,
which includes the land, sea, air, outer space, and
electron.” The last term, in U.S. documents, usu-
ally refers to the information sphere. The form of
war, the paper added, is becoming information
oriented. High technology was listed as an acquisi-
tion priority, and 20,000 kilometers of fiber optic
cable was laid in western China, while in October
2000 the General Staff organized a computer net-
working and electronic countermeasure exercise

76 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Thomas

around Beijing. Finally, the paper noted that
in 2001, many People's Liberation Army (PLA)
studies and exercises explored the features and
patterns of an integrated network-electronic war-
fare (INEW) concept. Thus, while not specifically
highlighting IW or IO, information-related topics
were mentioned.

INEW is worthy of further note. Earlier in
2002, in the journal China Military Science, Major
General Dai Qingmin, head of the 4 th Department
of the General Staff, explained the concept, which
he had first mentioned in the August 2000 issue
of that journal. Parts of Dai's 2002 article contra-
dicted the white paper. For example, he stated

that the concept

many People's Liberation Army studies placed more em-

and exercises explored an integrated p * asis on active

offense, whereas

network-electronic warfare concept t p e pa p e r em-
phasized a tradi-
tional active defense focus. Dai equated INEW
with IO, which the white paper did not, noting
that it "serves as information operations theory
with Chinese characteristics." It is strange that the
2002 Pentagon report on China did not mention
this concept, a theory that appears to be a half
cousin to the wildly popular Pentagon transforma-
tion concept of network-centric warfare (NCW).

This article compares General Dai's INEW
concept with the U.S. network-centric warfare
concept and highlights their strengths and weak-
nesses. Many issues arise. For example, both con-
cepts evade the fog and friction of war, assuming
perfect information and ignoring those problems
at their own peril. Further, both are bathed in their
own cultural environments. The United States
used a business metaphor when discussing NCW.
Dai, on the other hand, noted that INEW refers
to an overall concept, method, and strategy for
guiding IO, not a set of hardware and software or
a single system, and puts "the wings of network
warfare on traditional electronic warfare." Clearly,
moving from kinetic to network-based warfare will
be an interesting transformation as different na-
tions look at new developments in their own ways.

Integrated Network-Electronic Warfare

Dai's 2002 article, "On Integrating Network
Warfare and Electronic Warfare," noted several
topics of interest:

■ IO contradictions

■ IO centers of gravity

■ network weaknesses

■ importance of IT training

■ achieving information superiority

■ definitions of information war and other
terms, all with Chinese characteristics. 3

Dai argues that information warfare is com-
posed of six "forms": operational security, mili-
tary deception, psychological war, electronic war
(EW), computer network war, and physical de-
struction. He made only one further reference to
psychological operations in the article and never
again mentioned operational security, military
deception, and physical destruction. Electronic
warfare and computer network warfare thus cap-
tured most of his attention.

INEW, according to Dai, refers to a series of
combat operations that use the integration of
electronic warfare and computer network war-
fare measures to disrupt the normal operation
of enemy battlefield information systems while
protecting one's own, with the objective of seizing
information superiority — similar to the U.S. defini-
tion of IO. While network war disrupts processing
and use of information, EW disrupts acquisition
and forwarding of information. The core of com-
puter network warfare is to "disrupt the layers in
which information is processed, with the objec-
tive of seizing and maintaining control of network
space." EW is targeted at networked information
systems and informationalized weapons in order
to increase combat effectiveness. INEW is essential
for the system-versus-system confrontation on the
informationalized battlefield.

Dai did not use the term network centric, al-
though there seem to be similarities between his
and American concepts. For example, a subtitle
on the cover of a U.S. publication, Network Centric
Warfare, states that the concept is for "devel-
oping and leveraging information superiority."
The INEW objective, according to Dai, is not to
develop and leverage but simply to seize informa-
tion superiority.

INEW emphasizes integrating combat op-
erations by merging command, forces, objec-
tives, and actions. Command integration is its
unified planning, organization, coordination,
and control. Forces integration is its use in a com-
plementary manner. Objective integration is its
simultaneous use against enemy command, con-
trol, communications, computers, intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance (C 4 ISR), while
action integration is its coordination to produce
combined power. Dai listed the characteristics of
INEW as its comprehensive nature, its integrated
methods and expansive nature ("battlespace"),
and the integrated nature of its "effectiveness."

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 77

■ CHINESE AND AMERICAN NETWORK WARFARE

Launching AsiaSat-6 communication
satellite aboard Chinese-made Long March
3B rocket from Xichang, April 12, 2005

Forces integration implies the synthesis of plat-
forms with networks.

The concept has a comprehensive effect on
the enemy when it destroys C 4 ISR, according to
Dai, thereby constraining decisionmaking and
strategic planning. C 4 ISR systems are integrators

and force multipliers,

information operations revolve the focal point of io.
around destroying enemy systems Dai dld not address

, . „ what would happen if

and protecting friendly ones INEW only damaged

or disrupted systems,
but one can imagine that the effects would be
severe if not disabling. Integrated INEW methods
can be developed into a unified plan and orga-
nization for action, and the expansive nature of
battlespace (Dai implies an informationalized bat-

tlefield replete with information-based systems)
allows for noncontact and nonlinear operations
as well as full-depth integrated attacks. Finally,
the main targets are enemy military, political,
economic, and social information systems, mak-
ing the potential effectiveness greater than any
traditional combat operation form.

Information operations revolve around de-
stroying enemy systems and protecting friendly
ones. Acquiring and forwarding information re-
lies on electronic warfare, while processing and
using the information relies on computer net-
works. INEW provides the means to participate in
the system-versus-system confrontation and for
attaining information superiority since systems
are centers of gravity for combat forces. People
and weapons become insignificant when not
structured within a system. This concept appears
similar to the U.S. idea of systems integration ex-
cept for its emphasis on ideology and philosophy.
Ffowever, nowhere does Dai entertain fog and
friction in the information age; he presents his
argument as if there were no such problems.

The Chinese see the main combat contra-
diction as being between starting and stopping
the flow of information in both the electromag-
netic sphere and the space occupied by networks.
An example of a successful operation would be
disrupting information processing and obtain-
ing control over network space, thereby disrupt-
ing the enemy knowledge system and prevent-
ing commanders from obtaining information
required to make decisions. The struggle for infor-
mation superiority is vital since it is a precondi-
tion for seizing sea, air, and space superiority.

When discussing China's "two transforma-
tions," Dai again emphasized the active offense.
Fie noted that the first transformation means
changing from just EW to several forms and
methods, such as INEW. The second transfor-
mation is to emphasize both defense and of-
fense, with the "priority being the development
of offensive information operations equipment."
Again, this goal directly contradicts the empha-
sis in the white paper on the active defense. It
is not clear whether the Chinese deliberately
downplayed offensive operations in the informa-
tion age or it was a rebuff to Dai's article. With
regard to strategy, Dai noted that China must
make breakthroughs at weak points, seize the
commanding high ground, leap out of dead ends,
coordinate development, and grasp key junctures.

Finally, Dai noted that implementing INEW
required an "information warfare personnel de-

78 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Thomas

velopment plan." Information operations com-
mand personnel who understand technology and
can manage as well as staff personnel and trainers
are needed to teach and carry out ideological
work. Combat personnel are needed to study, re-
search, train, and fight. Finally, it is necessary to
develop competencies for merging networks and
electronics. Academies must develop specialized
courses, deepen reforms, and send large numbers
of multitalented IO personnel to units.

Putting the INEW plan into action will re-
quire the use of theoretical achievements and
modeling the battlefield deployment and other
situational aspects of an enemy force. Perhaps
this is being accomplished via computer network
brigades or reserve IW units serving as opposition
forces against the PLA. In China, theory guides
training, and rules and regulations are produced
from evaluating the training.

Most likely, Dai's article was condensed from
his earlier work. One critique of that work stated
that the concept of INEW demonstrated that

China no longer

traditional strategic theories are only learns from

being rethought, new strategies foreign militaries

, . , , . .. but has developed

mapped out, and new confrontation . 4 _. v .

innovative theories

strategies advanced with special Chinese

military features.
Further, the critique reiterated (as did Dai's 2002
article) that systems represent the center of grav-
ity of combat forces and that systems integration
uses information as a control mechanism to form
a combat capability greater than the sum of its
parts. To American IO theorists, however, the Chi-
nese approach does not appear to have as many
special "Chinese characteristics" as it purports.
INEW sounds similar to American theory of a few
years ago, when system-of-systems research was
more fashionable.

In fact, not only Chinese but also some U.S.
commanders highly regard electronic warfare,
even at the expense of computer network attack.
For example, General Fial Fiornburg, USAF, Chief
of Air Combat Command, noted that IO should
be separated into three areas: manipulation of
public perception, computer network attack, and
electronic warfare. Only the latter should be as-
signed to the warfighter. 4

In the 2000 article Dai stated that the means
of integrated application of information fighting
will initially be the integrated application of net-
works and electronics and that the key to gaining
the initiative in IO lies in the establishment of an

"active offensive." Dai also noted that an IO is a
series of operations with an information environ-
ment as the basic battlefield condition, with mili-
tary information and an information system as
the direct operational targets, and with EW and a
computer network war as the principal forms. 5

Dai further noted that information opera-
tions are both confrontations focusing on forces
and arms and, more importantly, trials of strength
focusing on knowledge and strategies, meaning
the emphasis should be on strategies. As technol-
ogy has reinforced human initiative, it has also
highlighted the role played by a confrontation of
strategies. Now traditional strategic theories are
being rethought, new strategies mapped out, and
new confrontation strategies advanced.

Network-Centric Warfare

In 1998, Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski,
USN (Ret.), the director for space, information
warfare, and command and control (N-6), and
John Garstka, the scientific and technical advi-
sor for the directorate for C 4 systems on the Joint
Staff (J— 6), wrote an article focused on business
adaptations to the information age: 6

■ The power of network-centric computing comes
from information-intensive interactions between large
numbers of heterogeneous computational nodes in the
network.

■ Competitive advantages come from the
co-evolvement of organizations and processes to exploit
information technology, employing network-centric
operational architectures consisting of a high-powered
information grid, a sensor grid, and a transaction grid.

■ The key to market dominance lies in making
strategic choices appropriate to changing ecosystems.

The authors then noted that network-cen-
tric operations offered the same dynamics to the
military. Strategically, that meant understanding
all the elements of battlespace and battle time; op-
erationally, it meant mirroring business ecosystem
linkages among units and the operating environ-
ment; tactically, it meant speed of operations; and
structurally, it meant that network-centric warfare
required sensor and transaction grids and an infor-
mation grid supported by command and control
processes needing automation for speed. Network-
centric warfare reportedly enabled a shift from
attrition warfare. Speed enabled a force to have
more battlespace awareness, mass effects instead
of forces, and foreclose enemy courses of action. It
also offset disadvantages in numbers, technology,
or position and was capable of locking out alterna-
tive enemy strategies and locking in success.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 79

■ CHINESE AND AMERICAN NETWORK WARFARE

This list is significantly different from Dai's,
with its focus on contradictions, ideology, and
centers of gravity. This is not surprising since
different cultures will interpret the interaction of
systems in different ways. Of concern, however, is
once again the notable absence of focus and dis-
cussion on the fog and friction of technology in a
real-time battlespace. The U.S. concept appears to
rely on speed to overcome all obstacles. The con-
cept seems to focus on "the content, quality, and
timeliness of information moving between nodes
on the network” and dismisses misinformation or
deception. Loren Thompson, chief operating offi-
cer of the Lexington Institute, commented about
overreliance on business strategies while critiqu-
ing a 2002 article by Admiral Cebrowski on NCW:

Let me conclude by answering Cebrowski's question
as to why commercial development cycles are so much
shorter than military ones. The reason is that it's
harder to get to geocentric orbit than the grocery store,
that no one is shooting at the Coca Cola Company,
and that private-sector executives don't rewrite their
business plans every time a consultant comes up with
a new idea. 7

reliance on interoperability
is not given the place it
deserves by U.S. theorists

There also appear to be built-in contradic-
tions in the concept. For example, the authors
note that NCW strength is designed to "offset a
disadvantage in numbers, technology, or posi-
tion." Further, "We must change how we train,
organize, and allocate resources
if the United States decides to
fight on an NCW rather than
a platform-centric basis." 8 Yet
the authors twice note that a
sensor or engagement grid must
be coupled in time to shooters, and the DOD
report to Congress on NCW stated, "Battlefield
entities (platforms, units, sensors, shooters) must
be designed 'net ready.'" 9 This reliance on in-
teroperability is not given the place it deserves by
U.S. theorists. This interoperability resembles the
integration process the Chinese stress.

Cebrowski and Garstka underscored that
NCW made the whole greater than the sum of
its parts, which the Chinese INEW concept also
noted, with the latter perhaps mimicking the
American authors. In contrast to the Chinese,
Cebrowski and Garstka used the term system spar-
ingly; however, systems remain important to the
U.S. concept.

David Alberts, John Garstka, and Frederick
Stein wrote Network Centric Warfare in 1999. The

book defines NCW as: an information superior-
ity-enabled concept of operations that generates
increased combat power by networking sensors,
decisionmakers, and shooters to achieve shared
awareness, increased speed of command, higher
tempo of operations, greater lethality, increased
survivability, and a degree of self-synchroniza-
tion. 10 The authors imply integration of platforms
and networks by including sensors and shooters
in their definition. Again, however, fog and fric-
tion are ignored.

In October 2002, Cebrowski wrote that any
weapons system must be on the net to remain
viable — the concept of a net-ready platform.
If such interoperability is not available, the pro-
gram is subject to cancellation. Risk is managed
by increasing the breadth of capabilities to cover
gaps. 11 Can simply increasing capabilities reduce
fog and friction? Don't surprise or disruption
mean anything for theory? Cebrowski also noted
that aircraft and other joint capabilities in Af-
ghanistan were empowered by high-speed NCW
principles. However, problems remained, such as
minimal information filtering and decision aids
for field commanders.

The DOD report to Congress about NCW
stressed many of these points. 12 It noted that
interoperability must not be abandoned ("a criti-
cal mass of connectivity and interoperability is
necessary to both encourage and support new
ways of doing business”) and that impediments
to the program must be overcome. However, the
report does assert that "NCW is to warfare what
e-business is to business" and "no single platform
or sensor is the heart of the system." The first
statement again overemphasizes the business-
military comparison, and the latter implies that
platforms remain vital to the NCW concept. We
are not moving from platform to NCW, but from
platform to an integrated or interoperable form of
platforms and nets.

Chinese IW expert Wang Baocun, writing in
China Military Science, discussed the U.S. concept
of network-centric warfare from a Chinese per-
spective. He did not compare NCW with INEW,
although he noted that China must study the
theoretical and practical aspects of other coun-
tries' efforts to develop an information-based
military in order for China to do the same. He
further stated that China must develop a com-
prehensive electronic information system and
that such systems should be integrated. 13 To that
degree, Wang appears to echo Dai.

80 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Thomas

Comparing NCW and INEW

The two explanations above represent the
basic views of Chinese and U.S. specialists on
network-related concepts. Clearly these are ideas
for the present and immediate future and will
form the basis of both countries' transformations.
However, the terms should be examined against
other paradigms as well. Admiral Cebrowski is a
proponent of alternate or even multiple concepts.

He stressed that "one best way” should not be
pursued, as there may not be one architecture or
standard. Rather, competing concepts should be
debated. And interestingly enough, the view from
a "bottom-up" perspective is different from the
view at the top. Those at the bottom have other
points for the authors to consider.

First, it is unfortunate that the authors who
proposed these concepts did not venture into
detailed definitions, for this lack has confused
readers. For example, Cebrowski and Garstka used
the terms network-centric computing, network-centric
operations, and network-centric war in their seminal
article without defining them. Readers were left I

with the impression that they are interchange- g,
able sound bites for an idea. A citation at the 1

end regarding NCW came closest to a definition, f
noting that it is "applicable to all levels of warfare -g
and contributes to the coalescence of strategy, op- 1
erations, and tactics. NCW is transparent to mis-
sion, force size and composition, and geography."
This description was updated in Network Centric
Warfare, by Alberts, Garstka, and Stein, which
Cebrowski reviewed. Their definition is better but
still needs specification, such as an explanation of
what a network "war" means. Would confrontation
or struggle work better, for example? Do networks
really war with one another?

The terminology problem is important be-
cause if we are attempting to sell a concept, we
need a thorough understanding of what we are
selling. The authors appeared to be describing
warfare enabled by speed of awareness and shared
knowledge to bring effects to bear on targets in
a timely and accurate manner. Thus, NCW is an
enabler much like other developments in the
mechanized age, albeit a quantum leap, to act as a
combat facilitator, especially of battlefield aware-
ness. Communications have always acted as en-
ablers, facilitators, and coordinators of battlespace
awareness, just not to the same degree as sensors
and satellites. Terms such as network-assisted plat-
form operations, network-coordinating engagement op-
erations, or simply network-centric operations appear
as appropriate as network-centric warfare. The

INEW concept suffers from the same imprecision.
In many ways it sounds like an updated version of
NCW except for its EW and stratagem links.

Second, many NCW authors describe a move-
ment away from platforms to networks in their
discussion of theory, then use an integrated or
interoperable model of platforms and networks
to describe their concept, which again shows lack
of precision. Further discussion of the move from
kinetic to combined kinetic, electronic, and net-
work-based warfare would have assisted under-
standing. NCW does not occur in isolation. If it
did, no one could use it because it would not con-
trol or be connected to anything; it would just be a
grouping of sensors and nodes joined to a network
that produces information. Rather, the concept
implies that sensors are part of systems integrated
into platforms. Weapons, weapons systems, and
platforms are plugged into the sensor, informa-
tion, and transaction grids that comprise NCW
at the moment, and they will be with us for some
time. Platforms launch weapons and have nodes
where network information is integrated into the
targeting and protection mechanisms of the plat-
form. Predators are platforms that use networks.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 81

■ CHINESE AND AMERICAN NETWORK WARFARE

Space Control Center in
Beijing monitoring return
of China’s first astronaut,
October 16, 2003

the American metaphor is
that if it works for business,
it will work for the military

The INEW concept used the word integrated while
NCW theorists used interoperable for KC-135 aerial
refuelers that possess routers, antennas, and other
equipment so the aircraft can transmit battlespace
information among units.

Third, the NWC discussion suggests that the
concept alone is sufficient to make a nation great
and modern. The American metaphor is that if it
works for business, it will work for the military.
The difference is that in the military, people plan
on destroying the networks through high-tech
weapons, making the systems useless. Or they
try to deceive sensors and satellites, which does
not happen often in business
because it runs on information
in a more perfect form. The
military does not possess per-
fect information to the degree
the market does; therefore, eco-
nomic superiority may not translate into military
superiority. Most important, there is no discus-
sion of what might happen if such a system meets
a like system or if there is even partial disruption.
Kosovo, Somalia, and Bosnia were not confron-
tations between modern systems, but rather of
modern against antiquated systems. So there is
little consideration of the impact of the fog and
friction of war on NCW and INEW. And there

remain problems of available bandwidth, mission
priorities and access to networked platforms, and
the number of combat systems that must be coor-
dinated — over 400 by some accounts.

Fourth, the network-centric concept is tech-
nology-focused, while INEW possesses a strong
stratagem element. This difference is important.
It is how INEW plans to "defeat the superior with
the inferior." The Chinese have noted that Asian
analysts think in terms of stratagems and Western
planners in terms of technology. Western strate-
gists should be aware of this perspective.

Alfred Kaufman, a study director at the U.S.
Institute for Defense Analyses, agrees that tech-
nology has too prominent a place in our military
thinking, so much so that it dictates military
strategy. He wrote that NCW theory has resulted
in "the virtual collapse of the intellectual struc-
ture that was erected to control the development
of Western military technology." He believes that
the Pentagon hopes that commercial innovation
will bring to war and to national security the
same benefits it brings to commercial enterprises.
In his view, NCW is flawed because it:

■ overestimates man's capacity to deal with con-
tradictory information

■ ignores the true nature of the enemy and drives
him to asymmetric strategies

■ ignores the dynamic nature of combat and bu-
reaucratizes war

■ assumes that military victory is an end in itself . 14

Fifth, consideration is given to the human
in the loop, yet one wonders if a proper paral-
lel should be drawn between NCW/INEW and
human network attacks (HNA). NCW and INEW
discuss the importance of training and educat-
ing personnel to conduct themselves as well as
to run a network-oriented staff. U.S. theory now
includes discussions of effects-based operations
to demonstrate how NCW can be used to affect
humans and objectives in a sequenced manner.
Addressing the human as a network might be the
next logical thinking. HNA refers to the ability
of weapons, including nonlethals, to shut down
the operating systems of people, who have their
electric circuitry in the form of neurons. Properly
targeted, this type of attack can make it difficult
for humans to enter the decisionmaking cycle to
assist in processing and selecting targets, the fail-
safe aspect to NCW and INEW.

Sixth, the United States needs to study for-
eign IO and NCW related concepts if it is to
understand how to work with or against the
cyber age systems of other countries. It is clear

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Thomas

that China studies Pentagon thinking. At Chinese
book stores there are hundreds of U.S. books
translated from English, especially in the IO area.
No such bounty on Chinese thinking can be
found in American book stores.

Finally and most importantly, Dai noted that
INEW is an offensive strategy based on acquiring
both defensive and offensive information op-
erations equipment, "with the priority being the
development of offensive information operations
equipment." Further, it is "important to take the
initiative and effectively destroy the enemy's elec-
tronic information systems ." 15 The focus on the
active offense is lacking in NCW discussions, as is
the Chinese focus on applying strategies to offset
inferiorities in technology and equipment. The
latter focus is really on the decisionmaker's mind,
with strategies being the means and perception
management the ends.

The good news is that the initial discussion
of NCW is over, and the concept has received
feedback from both private and public sources.
This has provided substance to Admiral Cebrows-
ki's foresight that more than one idea should be
pursued. China is lacking in that area. The INEW
topic has not been publicly critiqued. Perhaps the
dialectic of point and counterpoint works better
in Western culture based on its willingness to
confront ideas with counters or better ideas. In
many ways, China merely mirrors what happens
in the West in the network-centric arena, but the
West must be acutely aware of the Chinese nu-
ances and mirror imaging.

U.S. decisionmakers, many with business
backgrounds, must not apply their business expe-
rience to the military arena. The concept worked
well, but in an environment totally divorced from
the battlefield. China, on the other hand, will
continue to load its INEW concept with Chinese
characteristics, or so they say. Their metaphor will
be shaped by the words of famous strategists and
consider the use of deception and surprise while
the United States focuses on speed of response
and efficiency. One important distinction in the
Chinese approach, however, is that INEW would
be used to attack economic, political, societal,
and military networks.

Does U.S. strategy risk overdependence on
speed and prowess at the expense of other factors,
while China tries to defeat the superior with the
inferior, using good but not outstanding technol-
ogy combined with stratagems? Both concepts
lack ways to block failure in an age of continued

fog and friction. We are uncertain what happens
if our risk-taking fails. No one wants to talk about
that. And, as the conflict in Iraq extends and di-
verts funding from the transformation effort, we
may be closer than we think to confronting the
risks discussed here. JFQ

NOTES

1 China's National Defense in 2002, white paper
(Beijing: Information Office of the State Council of the
People's Republic of China, December 2002), available
at <www.aseansec.org/ARF/ARF-DWP/China-2002.doo.

2 See Annual Report on the Military Power of the
People's Republic of China (Washington, DC: Department
of Defense, July 2002).

3 Dai Qingmin, "On Integrating Network Warfare
and Electronic Warfare,” Zhongguo Junshi Kexue ( China
Military Science) (February 2002), 112-117, as translated
and downloaded by the Foreign Broadcast Information
Service (FBIS) Web site.

4 David Fulghum, "USAF Redefining Boundaries of
Computer Attack,” Aviation Week and Space Technology
158, no. 9 (March 3, 2003), 33.

5 "Introduction to Integrated Network-Electronic
Warfare," Jiefangjun Bao (February 26, 2002), 6, accessed
at <https://www.fbis.gov/>.

6 Arthur K. Cebrowski and John J. Garstka, "Net-
work-Centric Warfare: Its Origin and Future," U.S. Naval
Institute Proceedings 124, no. 1 (January 1998), 28-35.

7 Loren Thompson, "Dot-Com Mania," Defense
News, October 28-November 3, 2002, 12.

8 Cebrowski and Garstka.

9 Art Money, Report on Network Centric Warfare:
Sense of the Report, March 2001, accessed at <http://www.
dodccrp.org/NCW/NCW_report/report/ncww_cover.
htmlx

10 David S. Alberts, John J. Garstka, and Frederick
P. Stein, Network Centric Warfare (Washington, DC: Na-
tional Defense University Press, 1999), 2.

11 Arthur K. Cebrowski, "New Rules, New Era: Pen-
tagon Must Embrace Information Age," Defense News,
October 21-27, 2002, 28.

12 Annual Report.

13 Wang Baocun, "The Future Warfare for Which
the U.S. Military Is Making Preparations: Network-
Centric Warfare," Zhongguo Junshi Kexue ( China Military
Science) (October 2002), 133-143, as translated and
downloaded by FBIS.

14 Alfred Kaufman, "Caught in the Network,"
Armed Forces Journal (February 2005), 20-22.

15 Dai Qingmin.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ

U.S. Navy (Brandan Schulze)

Transforming the
"Retention Sector"

By MEREDITH LEYVA

T he U.S. Armed Forces will likely face a
retention problem in 2005. Not only
will this impede America's ability
to execute foreign policy, but also the
Pentagon will require massive budget outlays
to recruit and train replacements at a time
when some argue that it should be doubling
personnel strength.

The wars against terrorism and in Iraq are
not the specific causes of the retention problem.

Meredith Leyva is founder of CinCHouse.com, cofounder of Operation
Homefront, and author of Married to the Military.

Rather, it stems from the military's shortcomings
in transitioning to an all-volunteer force and the
continuing treatment of wartime personnel as
draftees. The key to keeping troops is recognizing
that they are professionals with personal com-
mitments who are concerned with the care their
families receive.

What Does Not Affect Retention

Many argued that the Department of De-
fense (DOD) was facing a junior officer reten-
tion problem before September 11. In attempting
to address key retention factors, policymakers

84 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Leyva

debated whether to increase military pay, which
28 percent of separating servicemembers indi-
cated as the primary reason for leaving. 1

Research by the RAND Corporation confirms
that "if a wide pay gap is allowed to develop, re-
cruiting and retention problems will follow." 2 The
2004 Defense Authorization Bill brought military
pay much closer to civilian pay. Because RAND
found that pay growth over a career decreases

for military profes-

quantitative data and anecdotal sionais compared to

evidence show a strong connection clvllians < policymak-
ers increased senior

between spouses and retention enlisted pay at higher

rates. These efforts
alone are not likely to solve the problem, how-
ever, because current servicemembers also cited
pay and benefits as the top reasons for staying.
Clearly, pay is a factor in retention, but perhaps
in a different way than commonly assumed.

A sense of purpose, credit for accomplish-
ments, promotion opportunities, and respect are
ranked as equally or more important than pay. On
quality of life surveys, a majority of service per-
sonnel consistently indicate high satisfaction with
these factors but moderate dissatisfaction with the
pace of promotions, unit morale, and a perception
of zero tolerance for mistakes. 3 Overall, however,
these factors do not appear to harm retention.

Current level of deployments, live combat,
training, and relocation are also frequently cited
for poor retention. However, servicemembers in-
dicate that deployments are part of the job; only 6
percent of separating members said deployments
were their primary reason for leaving. 4 Eighty
percent of active-duty personnel felt very satisfied,
satisfied, or neutral toward deployments and other
duties that took them away from home. 5 RAND
studies found that "rather than decreasing reen-
listment, deployment generally served to increase
it or leave it unchanged." 6 Servicemembers look
forward to using their skills, and informal surveys
indicate that spouses understand and generally
support their partners' passion for their jobs and
have incorporated deployments into their lives.

Similarly, fear of live combat may not be
a substantial factor in retention. Servicemem-
bers appreciate receiving the associated honors
and awards and perceive opportunities for faster
promotions. Perhaps more important, combat
in Afghanistan and Iraq has created a sense
of purpose among service personnel and their
spouses, given their strong support for the mis-
sion to fight terrorism.

Finally, relocation is probably not a signifi-
cant factor in retention; service personnel report
51 percent satisfaction, with 32 percent "nei-
ther satisfied nor dissatisfied" with the frequency
of relocation. 7

Real Factors in Retention

While pay, deployments, and combat alone
are not major retention factors, they are linked to
the real reason for separating. Analysis of quanti-
tative data and anecdotal evidence show a strong
connection between spouses and retention. Al-
though the majority of servicemembers indicated
a willingness to stay in the military as long as 20
years, most of them do not. By contrast, nearly
33 percent of servicemembers with companions
or spouses indicated that their significant other
wanted them to leave, while 15 percent said their
significant other had no opinion. 8 In other words,
nearly 50 percent of spouses and companions ei-
ther dislike or are ambivalent about the military
lifestyle. Only one RAND study shows a direct
connection: If spouses have "very unfavorable"
attitudes toward military life, then 63 percent of
nonmobilized Reservists said they would separate
from their service. 9

Thus, although servicemembers cite pay
and deployments as their reasons for separating,
spouse dissatisfaction may be the real factor.
Spouses supply an array of logistic and personal
support services that allow servicemembers to do
their jobs. They provide meals, care for children,
manage finances, and maintain careers that often
pay more than the servicemember receives. When
personnel deploy, spouses must assume the role
of single parents, perform tasks their partners
once did, and make family decisions alone.

If a spouse is frustrated with any aspect of
the military lifestyle, the servicemember feels
the impact both logistically and emotionally. For
example, disruption of a spouse's career because
of relocation or deployment hurts financially. A
spouse's casual comments about a civilian neigh-
bor's higher pay may lead a servicemember to
conclude that civilian life would be better for the
family. This may explain personnel citing low pay
rather than lack of family support as a primary
reason for separating.

This complex dynamic may also explain
the seemingly contradictory data regarding the
impact of deployments on reenlistment. RAND
studies found that a standard deployment actu-
ally increased the likelihood of reenlistment. But
"an additional tour of duty atop the first — such as

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 85

■ TRANSFORMING THE "RETENTION SECTOR

another three months away from home — reduces
the likelihood of reenlistment, especially in the
Army and Marine Corps. The negative effect of
the extra tour is strongest when it involves hos-
tilities." 10 The issue is both the length of the tour
and the uncertainty of the servicemember's re-
turn, which may reflect the spouse's need for pre-
dictability. Spouses accept deployments because

they support their

access to some basic services is

essentially denied to spouses because
of bureaucratic rules and attitudes

servicemembers'
careers, but when
additional tours
are ordered, fam-
ily life becomes
unstable and the spouse and servicemember may
feel as though their loyalty is being abused.

A direct survey of Army wives confirms their
opinions. While 64 percent of wives felt a 3- to
6-month deployment posed no problem, and
43 percent were unconcerned about a 7-month
absence, the number reversed dramatically when
the deployment increased; 48 percent felt a de-
ployment of more than 1 year posed a serious or
very serious problem, while 58 percent felt the
same about a mission of undetermined length. 11

Insufficient research has been conducted
to substantiate the link between spouse satisfac-
tion and retention and to determine spouses'
needs. The lack of data has partly to do with the
employer-employee relationship and the mu-
tual need for some distance between the mili-
tary establishment and families. Moreover, some
military leaders perceive spouses as impediments
to that relationship, and the high divorce rate
discourages them from involvement in families'
lives. This approach should be reconsidered, not
because spouses deserve special treatment, but
because DOD must retain its best people.

Who Spouses Are and What They Want

Two common stereotypes of military spouses
are as World War II-era wives pining away at
home and as "trouble-making trailer trash.” De-
mographic data presents a very different image.
Ninety-four percent of military spouses are
women, and the remaining 6 percent are primar-
ily older, prior-service husbands who need less
assistance than a 23-year-old woman new to mili-
tary life. Nearly 85 percent of military wives work
outside the home. They are better educated than
the average American, with only 5 percent of
junior enlisted wives failing to finish high school
and 67 percent working toward or having a post-
secondary degree.

Given these characteristics, wives obviously
need support during disruptions to their careers
and home life caused by the military. Equally im-
portant, they need some degree of predictability
within reason of military logistics and security.
They want to return to the firmer homecoming
dates of past deployments, so they can establish
some stability in their professional and family
lives. The tempo of deployments more than
tripled in some services before September 11
and has increased with missions to Afghanistan
and Iraq. Ongoing deployments to the Middle
East and the DOD transformation plans for last-
minute battlegroup formations could further re-
duce predictability and correspondingly heighten
spousal desire for separation.

Inadequacy of Support Services

Current support services include various of-
ficial, semiofficial, and unofficial organizations.
The fact that unofficial organizations are more
likely to handle the more complex problems
reflects both the employer's fear of entanglement
in family life and the failure to recognize a direct
correlation between spouses and retention.

Access to some of the most basic services pro-
vided by official military support for families, such
as relocation and housing, is essentially denied to
spouses because of bureaucratic rules and attitudes.
For example, spouses may not receive services and
counseling from most relocation and housing
offices without a unique power of attorney from
their servicemembers specifically authorizing it.
Traffic Management Office (TMO) officials have
explained that some spouses have tricked them
into relocating household goods to a different
place than indicated on the orders, enabling the
spouse to leave her husband at the military's ex-
pense. The TMO approach is to deal directly with
the servicemember, regardless of whether he is
currently deployed or occupied at work.

Another example is the fact that the military
will not ship a second vehicle during a reloca-
tion within the United States. Without a car, a
spouse might not be able to work. Military fami-
lies must either relocate using two cars or pay to
ship a spouse's car to a new location. Thus,
this policy can cause tremendous financial and
emotional strain.

The secondary source of official support is the
family support center (FSC), which provides coun-
selors on relocation logistics, financial manage-
ment, domestic violence, and career assistance for
spouses. A RAND analysis of the 1992 Quality of

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Leyva

General Myers swears in
Soldiers at reenlistment
ceremony at Camp
Victory, Iraq, March 2005

Life Survey reveals that FSC programs for spouse
career assistance, spouse and child abuse, and
housing were rated well below satisfactory — even
though they are perhaps the most important
functions of FSCs for spouses. 12 Additionally, only
23 percent of survey participants had used the
centers in the last 2 years, and the majority were
overseas. A reason for the lack of use is found in
the 2001 Morale and Quality of Life Study, which
includes a policy goal of responding to changing
family demographics:

The family support system has not kept pace with the
changing family structure. Nor has it kept pace with
the higher aspirations and expectations of an increas-
ingly better educated workforce and their families.
Critical enhancements include childcare; opportunities
for military spouses to find employment and programs
to develop careers and enhance education; education
for military children; and family support networks. 13

A 1997 survey of junior enlisted spouses
concluded that:

Very few spouses used any EAP [employment assis-
tance program] service. Accordingly, very few spouses
found their jobs through the EAP. . . . There is also a
need to determine why almost one third of those who
did use the EAP were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied
with the program. 1 *

RAND analysis indicates that DOD founded
the FSCs believing that family morale and reten-
tion are strongly linked. 15 However, the report crit-
icizes DOD for failing to confirm that link, track
progress, and set goals. The FSC system is divided
into service "silos" that do not share best practices,
and a survey indicates that families fear being seen
at an FSC lest they be labeled as troubled.

DOD has not invested sufficiently in FSCs
since their establishment. Offices typically are

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 87

1 st Combat Camera Squadron (D. Myles Cullen)

■ TRANSFORMING THE "RETENTION SECTOR

Loadmaster oversees
spouse orientation flight
of C— 17 at Charleston
Air Force Base

open from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., hours when
most spouses work. Additionally, some centers are
reluctant to coordinate actively with semiofficial
or unofficial support organizations, namely out
of privacy concerns, even though coordination
could provide more effective services. Also, a
lack of funding impedes services. Because many
counselors do not have telephones or voice mail,
families must try repeatedly to reach them. RAND
points out that personnel programs are a non-
wage benefit equivalent to just $700 per Soldier.

The services and the Pentagon have at-
tempted to provide information and services on

the Internet, most recently with the launch of
Military OneSource. This site is significantly bet-
ter than the service sites such as Navy LifeLines,
in part because a person can always be reached
on its around-the-clock hotline, but families still
cannot conduct business or receive counseling
services over the Internet.

Nonprofit organizations are another form of
official support in the sense that they often act
as an arm of the FSCs. Army Emergency Relief
and the Air Force Aid Society both receive Federal
funds, while the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Soci-
ety is fully funded by donations. These organiza-
tions often provide excellent financial counseling
and relief services, but they are hampered by
restrictive policies and procedures of the military
agencies with whom they work. For example,
they cannot extend office hours to help working
wives because base accounting and personnel
offices, which provide key information, typically
close at 4:00 p.m. or earlier. Other nonprofit
organizations such as the United Services Orga-
nization and Armed Forces YMCA often do not
market their programs to wives sufficiently.

The Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR)
office conducts recreational activities and events
to support family morale. However, it has been
pressed into profit generation, so events and
services are underutilized because families can-
not afford them. The funds go toward supporting
family programs such as counseling. DOD schools
and the Exceptional Family Member Program are
generally well regarded but are no better than
what would be expected in a civilian community.

Semiofficial Support Organizations

Leading the semiofficial support organiza-
tions are the family support groups (FSGs) and
family readiness groups (FRGs). They are a major
support source for spouses during deployments
and relocation but are only as good as the volun-
teers who lead them. FSGs used to be led by the
wives of commanding officers, but now junior
wives are increasingly taking over even if they
lack experience.

The issues of infrastructure, continuity, and
institutional memory are major problems facing
semiofficial organizations because of high turn-
over among volunteers. For example, one elemen-
tary school serving the junior enlisted population
at Camp Pendleton had no Parent-Teacher Asso-
ciation because the past-year association officers
all relocated simultaneously. FSCs and commands
are often unwilling to get involved because of

88 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Leyva

Spouses Club members
and their families sort
messages to troops

fear of entanglement and failure to recognize
the importance of family morale on retention.
FSCs may support semiofficial organizations by
sharing office space, but volunteers overall have
little interaction and coordination with the FSCs.
Perhaps most important, there is no central guide
to best practices for support group volunteers.

Official and semiofficial organizations' fail-
ure to meet the needs of military families has
prompted the increase in unofficial organiza-
tions, including large

family support groups and family internet-based commu-
readiness groups are only as good nities and local meet '

ing groups. Unofficial

as the volunteers who lead them groups address spouses ,

need to be respected
and not patronized, and to receive the unofficial
"scoop" on topics the military establishment is
unable or unwilling to address — including marital
problems, financial difficulties, and living condi-
tions in base housing — and do so with convenient
meeting times and communication platforms.

Military family support agencies cannot rec-
ognize or cooperate with unofficial groups unless
the groups apply for recognition on base, which
is often not worth the effort of time-pressed vol-

unteers. Thus, the agencies do almost no coor-
dination with unofficial groups, even though a
majority of wives turn to them for support.

Perhaps more important, the increase in un-
official organizations has reduced cohesion in the
military community. For example, many wives
relocate but refuse to meet other local military
families because they prefer to chat online with
wives elsewhere. This trend undermines the emo-
tional and logistic support military families need
in times of crisis.

Staving Off a Retention
Problem with Transformation

DOD must apply the principles of transfor-
mation to the "retention sector" and rethink its
approach toward spouses, recognizing that their
satisfaction is vital to retention. This is a purely
business decision. DOD should protect its invest-
ment in quality personnel and mitigate the cost
of recruiting and training replacements by ad-
dressing the less costly needs of spouses.

The department should adopt wives as "per-
sonal support command centers" (PSCCs) and
change the minds and attitudes of officers, senior
enlisted, and civil servants. This campaign must

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 89

U.S. Navy (Johnny Bivera)

■ TRANSFORMING THE "RETENTION SECTOR

Soldier returning from Operation
Iraqi Freedom greeted by family at
jmecoming ceremony in Plymouth,
NewHampshire, March 2005

commands and family support
agencies must make their
operations more accessible

be led by senior Pentagon officials and, beyond
the initial launch of the concept, be incorporated
into nearly every discussion topic.

With a mandate from the top, both com-
mands and key agencies should be required
to review and revise their operations to en-
sure that spouses' needs
are given appropriate
consideration. First, com-
mands should bring pre-
dictability to deployments
where possible. Defense
planners must weigh the benefit of their new
concepts for battlegroups that deploy almost
randomly against new concepts of predictable
"human maintenance" cycles that allow members
genuine recuperation time.

Under the PSCC concept, commands and
agencies must view spouses as partners in pro-
viding logistic support to uniformed personnel.
Spouses should receive predeployment briefings
alongside their servicemembers to prepare for per-

sonal logistic and financial contingencies. Brief-
ings should be held during nonworking hours,
and childcare should be available. Similarly, relo-
cation and housing offices should view spouses as
the primary contacts during the relocation pro-
cess, thereby easing the burden on service person-
nel (and their commands). Bureaucratic obstacles
such as power of attorney should be removed.

DOD must also get serious about providing
and adequately funding genuine support services
for spouses. With a small investment in spouses'
careers, DOD not only improves their morale
but also increases members' income at minimal
expense to taxpayers. Opportunities include hir-
ing preferences for spouses in government jobs,
incentives for defense contractors to hire military
spouses, G.I. Bill portability, and access to mili-
tary courses for spouses.

Network Centric

Commands and family support agencies
must make their operations more accessible.

90 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

157 th Air Refueling Wing (Dawn Finniss)

Leyva

Office hours and business approaches should be
convenient to working spouses, and most busi-
ness should be conducted over the phone or
Internet. DOD Web sites should not be designed
along service silos as lists of links to outside infor-
mation; instead, families should receive genuine
counseling and transact family business over
one consolidated site. Job searches and financial
management may be better handled by a central
network than by individual FSCs. A network-cen-
tric approach would also allow relocating spouses
to fully access services at the new base, meaning
they could find housing, child care, and jobs be-
fore packing their bags.

The consolidation of family support into a
Pentagon-level joint command, possibly along
with privatization at base offices, should be con-
sidered. FSCs can more easily recruit staff as well
as do a better job of sharing best practices across
the services. Staff members must build relation-
ships with semiofficial and unofficial organiza-
tions even if it means spending several nights a
week at FSC and spouse club meetings. Partly for
this reason, it makes sense for FSCs to hire ac-
tive-duty wives who are already involved in their
community and understand their peers. An FSC
should provide space, resources, and continuity
for semiofficial support organizations instead of
competing for attention. In that capacity, FSCs
can also help direct and coordinate local civilian
support for military families.

Further, consideration should be given to
merging FSCs and MWR organizations across ser-
vices. Both organizations would benefit from lead-
ership and representation at the Pentagon level,
better tracking and methodological processes,
economies of scale, and enhanced negotiating
power in dealing with corporate sponsorships.

The launch of the PSCC concept should ini-
tiate critical research on the link between spouses
and retention and ways to track the effectiveness
of family programs. As these programs are devel-
oped or revamped, methods must be developed
to identify and share best practices and link them
to retention and morale — the ultimate measure of
return on investment.

The keys to retention are to recognize that
servicemembers are not draftees and to treat
them as professionals with families and personal
commitments. A relatively small investment in
spouses could prevent a massive expenditure
on bonuses to stave off a retention crisis, fol-
lowed by an expensive campaign to recruit and

train replacements. These transformation-based
recommendations are only some of many excel-
lent possibilities. Few require extra budget dollars,
but all require an attitude adjustment toward
spouses and an overarching strategy for genuinely
addressing their needs. The military must be com-
fortable dealing with spouses if it wishes to retain
experienced, professional servicemembers and
complete its mission. JFQ

NOTES

1 Norman J. Rabkin, "Preliminary Results of DOD's
1999 Survey of Active Duty Members," testimony before
the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, Committee
on Armed Services, House of Representatives (March 28,
2000), 7.

2 "Is There a Gap Between Military and Civilian
Pay?" (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, Au-
gust 18, 2000).

3 Defense Manpower Data Center, "July 2002 Sta-
tus of Forces Survey of Active-Duty Members," Report
2002-021 duly 2002), 58-74, 94-96.

4 Rabkin, 7.

5 "July 2002 Status of Forces Survey," 118-121.

6 "Perstempo: Does It Help or Hinder Reenlist-
ment?" Research Brief RB-7532 (Santa Monica, CA: The
RAND Corporation, 1999).

7 "July 2002 Status of Forces Survey," 116.

8 Ibid., 42-44, 56.

9 Sheila Nataraj Kirby and Scott Naftel, "The Effect
of Mobilization on Retention of Enlisted Reservists after
ODS/S,” Report MR-943-OSD (Santa Monica, CA: The
RAND Corporation, 1998), 29.

10 James Hosek and Mark Totten, "Serving Away
from Home: How Deployments Influence Reenlistment"
(Santa Monica, CA: The RAND Corporation, 2002).

11 Morris Peterson, Army Personnel Survey Office,
U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and So-
cial Sciences, "Survey of Army Families IV: Final Quick
Summary" (January 2002), question 24.

12 Richard Buddin, "Building a Personnel Support
Agenda," Report MR-916-OSD (Santa Monica, CA: The
RAND Corporation, 1998), 50-52.

13 The RAND Corporation, "Defense Morale and
Quality of Life Study" (Santa Monica, CA: The RAND
Corporation, June 2001), 6-7.

14 Rita Bureika et al., "Effective Strategies to Assist
Spouses of Junior Enlisted Members with Employment:
Analysis of the 1997 Survey of Spouses of Enlisted Per-
sonnel," Defense Manpower Data Center (June 2000),
167.

15 Buddin, 7.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 91

99 m Communications Squadron (Jeffrey Hall)

Air defense platoon leader checking
Patriot launcher coverage on range
during Joint Red Flag 2005

Here Today, Here to Stay

By MICHAEL A. COSS

T he Goldwater-Nichols Department of
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986
revamped joint officer management
policies to improve the quality of of-
ficers serving on joint staffs, the advice given to
the Secretary of Defense, and the effectiveness of
military operations. Joint officer management was
one of the most contentious parts of that seminal
legislation, but it established the educational,
training, and operational basis for developing
joint warfighting professionals who are adept at

Lieutenant Colonel Michael A. Coss, USA, is G-3 with 10 th Mountain
Division and serves as CJ-3 with Combined Joint Task Force 76 in
support of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

leveraging the capabilities of the entire force to
accomplish missions and tasks across the spec-
trum of conflict. Indeed, the professional skills
that emerged are largely responsible for recent
military successes and portend continued excel-
lence and vitality within the joint profession.

Troops who fought together during Iraqi Free-
dom are now training together to further enhance
their joint capabilities at the point of the spear.
The services are modularizing their forces, making
them more dependent on the capabilities of the
other services to create operational effects that
directly contribute to achieving objectives. Also,
combatant commands are reviewing strategic war
plans, and the Joint Staff is revamping weapons

92 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

C o s s

procurement processes to improve strategic ca-
pabilities. Joint operations are here to stay, and
while the joint officer management system and
joint organizations are not perfect, they do not
require the major changes some have argued for.

The Joint Profession

It has taken nearly a generation to grow a
cadre of joint officers and a body of joint knowl-
edge, but managing this within a new joint war-
fare profession as described

while the joint officer by Don Snider would un-

management system and joint dermme the progress made

, thus far. Snider is correct in

organizations are not perfect, identifying symptoms of the
they do not require the major glacial pace of change, but

changes some have argued for hls solutlons are question-
able. He calls for legislation
to create a new joint warfare
profession, a new joint doctrine and education
command, and a new joint personnel command. 1

This article argues that we already have a
joint profession and the processes to develop and
manage the body of joint knowledge. It argues
further that we do not need another joint bureau-
cracy to manage the personnel system. Rather, we
need to stay the course and continue to diffuse
jointness broadly and to the lowest levels pos-
sible. Only in this manner can we develop the
largest, most competent set of joint professionals
to wage modern war. From there we can develop
and manage the associated knowledge and juris-
dictions of the profession. Future conflicts will
increasingly be characterized by decentralized op-
erations, where interdependent joint capabilities
and associated forces provide key advantages.

A good definition for joint professionals would
be those who are schooled in and practice the
unique and expert competencies of joint warfare,
and respond to its calling with moral service to
the nation. 2 Joint warfare must also have "full au-
thority over its own internal jurisdictions for the
creation and adaptation of the profession's expert
knowledge, and for the development and utiliza-
tion of joint professionals." 3

Current processes achieve this. An explicit
process develops joint doctrine that provides
and adapts the body of expert knowledge for this
profession, and joint officer management policies
and statutes provide for the development and
utilization of the joint professionals themselves.
And while these processes can be improved, they
certainly meet the definitional characteristics
required for a joint profession.

Status of the Joint Profession

Contemporary analysis of Operations Endur-
ing Freedom and Iraqi Freedom suggests we are
closer to realizing the joint warfight than ever
before. Congressional testimony by Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former Com-
mander, U.S. Central Command, General Tommy
Franks, USA, attributed operational success to
the unprecedented jointness demonstrated by
the entire force. At the tactical level, Soldiers and
Airmen interoperated much better than in previ-
ous conflicts, and General Franks developed an
operational plan that relied on pushing jointness
to increasingly lower levels. Additionally, recent
testimony by both Commander, U.S. Joint Forces
Command (JFCOM), who was in charge of col-
lecting lessons learned, and Army War College
historians and other analysts who conducted
extensive research in theater also attributed the
operational success to the unprecedented level of
jointness exhibited during the operations.

Conflicts require commanders who are
skilled in their profession, are capable of com-
manding and controlling their organizations and
formations, and can exploit new technological ca-
pabilities. During Iraqi Freedom, and increasingly
since passage of the 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act,
success has depended on commanders who had
joint expertise, commanded joint organizations,
and had access to interoperable joint capabilities.
In fact, modern warfare will continue to require a
robust body of expert warfighters who are capable
of using interoperable technologies networked
across the joint force to achieve optimal solutions
that apply all of the joint arms.

Providing these expert warfighters requires
the means to develop and manage the internal
jurisdictions of the profession. These include the
body of expert knowledge and the experts them-
selves, but joint processes already capture the
former by codifying the innovations with broad
and enduring application into joint doctrine.
And other joint processes, including the biannual
review of the Unified Command Plan, implement
changes to joint organizations and missions to
better meet our global responsibilities.

In a similar effort, JFCOM is reviewing the
operations in Afghanistan and Iraq to explore
doctrine and organizational changes, and parallel
efforts are under way to strengthen the com-
mand's role as the joint doctrine center for the
entire force. The joint force is actively managing
and adapting its internal jurisdictions over this
body of expert knowledge.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 93

■ jo

NT PROFESSIONALS

Joint processes also provide adequate means
to develop and manage the joint warfighting
experts. These include education and training
standards, joint assignment criteria, and quality
controls that provide joint force commanders
high caliber officers. Given these facts, a total re-
vamping of the joint profession does not appear
necessary as it was just prior to the passage of the
Goldwater-Nichols Act.

Emerging Joint Culture

The joint force has moved beyond the point
where congressional action forced it to assign
quality officers to joint billets. As a profession,
the force has begun to manifest jointness in very
principled ways. Joint culture shows how the at-
titudes, values, and beliefs of the joint profession
have evolved to mirror the evolution of joint war-
fare. There have tradition-
ally been four cultures —
products of four services
that tended to fight sepa-
rately. As technology ad-
vanced, it became prudent
and often necessary to
develop doctrine to deconflict the battlespace
among the services by, for instance, establishing a
fire support coordination line to separate air and
ground fires from ground forces.

In the 1980s, jointness started becoming a
means to a more effective end. The AirLand Battle
doctrine was progressive because it recognized
the interdependent relationships air and land
power had in defeating Soviet forces on the plains
of Europe.

Likewise, today's Army officers recognize
their dependence on Air Force and Navy assets
to provide more effective fires and conduct op-
erational maneuver from strategic distances. De-
veloping further trust is critical because these
interdependencies will remain relevant given
recent operations and emerging joint concepts.
Conversely, Air Force and Navy operational fires,
particularly aircraft, can be more effective when
Army forces flush targets from restrictive and
urban terrain or force them to mass, as demon-
strated during recent conflicts.

As the authors intended, war planning has
also become more joint since the Goldwater-
Nichols Act. Regional combatant commands,
which are primarily responsible for developing
and managing such plans, almost invariably de-
velop fully integrated plans using the capabilities
of each service. This interdependence continues

Regional combatant commands
almost invariably develop fully
integrated plans using the
capabilities of each service

to make warfare more joint as it reshapes the at-
titudes, values, and beliefs of our profession.

Service identities remain strong and at the
center of our capabilities, but they have been
assuming a joint perspective to meet new war-
fighting requirements. Indeed, service cultures are
adapting to the whole joint force.

The intent of the Goldwater-Nichols Act was
to leverage the capabilities of the individual ser-
vices to more effectively meet the requirements
of the joint force as a whole. The operational
challenge now is to take this to the level of joint
interdependency, where service capabilities are
combined to maximize their total capacity, rein-
forcing their effects while minimizing their rela-
tive vulnerabilities.

The key provisions of the act established
clear authorities for joint commanders and leg-
islated a specific process to develop and man-
age joint expertise within the officer corps. It
clarified these authorities by placing the combat-
ant commanders directly under the Secretary
of Defense and requiring the services to assign
all their combat forces to them. It established
means to develop and manage joint expertise by
legislating educational standards for the joint
force, requirements for joint utilization tours, and
specific standards to control the quality of joint
officers. After nearly two decades, these factors
have developed a joint profession, and we should
examine them individually before recommending
further improvements.

Organizations

The Goldwater-Nichols Act placed new em-
phasis on joint organizations, empowered their
commanders, and resourced them with quality
officers from each service. This has contributed
to the emergence of the joint profession. The
emphasis on joint organizations recognized the
necessity of employing integrated force packages.
Lessons from the Vietnam War demonstrated that
the Department of Defense (DOD) was not prop-
erly organized to achieve the level of interoper-
ability required.

Placing the combatant commands directly
below the Secretary in the chain of command
and giving them authority to reorganize and
command their forces have largely resolved this
issue. Combatant commanders and subordinate
joint task force (JTF) commanders have exercised
this authority in their assigned missions, demon-
strating the important contribution this reorga-
nization offers. These joint organizations provide

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

C o s s

Army Apache lifting off the structure in which quality officers from each
USS Nassau during joint service practice the craft of joint warfighting.

shipboard weapons New joint processes were another outgrowth

and ordnance training, , , ' , „ T . , .

February 2005 °f t ^ le Goldwater-Nichols Act. The legislation

sought to provide the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff and combatant commanders a stronger
voice in determining requirements. The Joint Re-
quirements Oversight Council (JROC), Military Ed-
ucation Coordinating Committee, and integrated
priority lists are examples of joint processes codi-
fied after the act was passed. While these processes
are not flawless, they help require the services to
advance their interests within the joint context.

This trend continues with the publication of
Joint Operations Concepts, which provides a vision
of future joint warfare and a conceptual frame-
work from which future capability needs will be
determined. Similarly, the Joint Capabilities Inte-
gration and Develop-

the Goldwater-Nichols Act sought men t System (jcids),
to provide the Chairman and which replaces the re-

combatant commanders a stronger quirements generation
voice in determining requirements system, utilizes joint

concepts, validated
by experimentation, to derive and assess critical
capabilities from a joint and operational perspec-
tive and then determine capability gaps, shortfalls,
and redundancies.

Both Joint Operations Concepts and JCIDS
further strengthen the Chairman's and combat-
ant commanders' influence in developing joint
capabilities. Each provides a means of grading the
services in meeting joint capability needs and en-
courages them to develop "born-joint" solutions.
They further the development of joint culture
and provide additional means for joint profes-
sionals to practice their craft.

Education and Training

The education and training of joint officers
provide the foundation for enhancing these orga-
nizations and processes. The Goldwater-Nichols
Act established joint officer management poli-
cies and joint professional military education
programs that required subsequent employment
in joint-coded billets. To establish and maintain
quality across service programs, it also required
the Secretary to revise the curriculum of each
school periodically "to strengthen the focus on
joint matters and on preparing officers for joint
duty assignments.” Such refinements have es-
sentially established an education process for the
joint force, including general and flag officers.

First, service staff colleges expose selected
officers to the fundamentals of jointness prior
to joint assignments. Students learn about joint

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 95

USS Nassau (Brian McFadden)

■ joint professionals

Pre-mission briefing on organizations and processes and how to meet the
operational and tactical strategic and operational requirements of corn-
effectiveness through batant commands. Additionally, Joint Forces Staff
joint integrated training College (National Defense University at Norfolk,
Virginia) provides officers more detailed educa-
tion while they are assigned or en route to joint
billets. It provides in-depth exposure to the pro-
cesses and procedures they will need to function
in combatant command headquarters.

Next, the senior service colleges and the Na-
tional Defense University's National War College
and Industrial College of the Armed Forces teach
the strategic art of developing and practicing
national security strategy and policy and of com-
manding joint organizations. Finally, general and
flag officers receive further instruction on how to
plan and employ forces in joint and combined
operations in a variety of courses and continuing
educational programs.

This training helps prepare officers to serve
in joint billets, but actually serving is the primary
means for developing the appreciation and exper-
tise for employing the joint force. Before detailing
the benefits of this on-the-job-training, how well
does the joint curriculum prepare officers for
joint assignments?

Instruction at the captain/major and lieuten-
ant/lieutenant commander level provides the
basics of national military capabilities and com-
mand structure, joint doctrine, joint and multina-
tional forces at the operational level, joint plan-
ning and execution processes, and information

operations. It also introduces national security
and military strategy in developing theater strate-
gies, theater engagement and campaign planning
with joint and multinational and interagency or-
ganizations, the Joint Strategic Planning System,
the Joint Operations Planning and Execution Sys-
tem, and operational-level battlespace systems in-
tegration through deliberate and crisis planning.

These subjects are addressed more fully at
the senior service colleges and the National De-
fense University, where military leaders prepare
for joint service at the highest levels. These ven-
ues educate leaders on national security respon-
sibilities in joint, multinational, and interagency
settings — what is now called integrated opera-
tions — through teaching, research, and outreach.

Finally, the general/flag officer instruction
teaches national security strategy and the joint
operational art. The first overall joint flag course
is known as Capstone, an intensive 6-week course
examining national security decisionmaking, mil-
itary strategy, joint/combined doctrine, interoper-
ability, and allied-nation issues. The JFCOM role
as the joint force trainer and integrator has led
the command to host a portion of the Capstone
training so all rising flag officers receive more
specific instruction on how to operate as JTF
commanders. It also conducts refresher training
for all selected three-star commanders consistent
with its view that the business of flag officers is
commanding joint formations.

Such training is necessary but not sufficient.
It teaches the basic structures, organizations, and
statutes on which the joint system is founded but
cannot deliver the in-depth warfighting knowl-
edge joint commanders need. That comes only
after an officer is well versed in the skills of his
service and rises to a level where he applies those
skills in a joint context. A fundamental strength
of our system is that the services provide the joint
community with officers who are adept at their
service core competencies prior to developing
joint competencies.

The services teach the basic skills the joint
force requires. It is akin to offensive blocking and
defensive tackling in football where the groups
must master their fundamentals, play as a team,
and depend on each other to interoperate and
win. A quarterback or coach must be skilled in
the fundamentals of the game yet need not be an
expert in every facet — just in knowing how the
parts interoperate.

The joint force is similar. The services are
adept at providing skilled offensive and defensive

JFQ / issue thirty-eight

C o s s

players, and from those we select the most quali-
fied to coach our formations. The services remain
at the center of the process for developing joint
professionals as they retain control and promote
their best officers.

Due to the Goldwater-Nichols quality stan-
dards for officers in joint billets, service compe-
tency has become a prerequisite to the joint tran-
sition. These standards provide joint commanders
the quality officers from each service, and as they
serve in joint billets and train and fight within a
joint context, they develop the expertise to fight
the joint force. This on-the-job training — practi-
cal joint experience — is key to developing the
expert knowledge and jurisdiction of the joint
professional.

Joint Assignments

There is no substitute for experiential learn-
ing, especially in the joint warfighting profession,
which relies on officers bonding by serving in
joint organizations charged with accomplish-
ing real-world missions. Joint professionals are
expected to cast aside service prejudices. In the
process, they learn more about their sister services
than is possible in the classroom.

Officers in joint assignments typically serve
on three types of staffs: the Office of the Secretary
of Defense or Joint Staff in Washington, combat-
ant commander staffs across the globe, or defense
agency staffs. Joint task forces
the services teach the basic are a subset of the second cat-
skills the joint force requires egory and are established to

accomplish specific missions.
Each of these staffs, however, develops joint offi-
cers by enabling them to work with the other ser-
vices to accomplish military missions, which gives
them the expertise to produce and manage joint
doctrine, perform joint assignments, and work in
other joint jurisdictions.

Additional joint expertise comes from the
services' training programs as well as from the
Chairman's Joint Training and Exercise Program.
Such exercises occur at combat training and flight
centers, while others are conducted by JFCOM
and other combatant commands. During many of
these drills, the services practice their core compe-
tencies in the context of joint warfare. These ven-
ues increasingly apply combined and joint arms
in accomplishing missions on the battlefield.

Quality Controls

The quality standards in the Goldwater-
Nichols Act require that officers serving in joint

billets be promoted at rates equal to or higher
than those on service staffs. Furthermore, the
act established Congress as the watchdog for
monitoring service compliance by requiring
annual promotion reports. Although the services
continue to miss select portions of the quotas,
this problem is generally on the margins, and
these joint staffs largely continue to be populated
by each of the services' brightest officers. This is
due to the assignment process itself, incentives to
serve in joint billets, and the growing importance
of joint warfare.

The services remain at the center of the
assignment process, and since they run their
own promotion boards, those they select for
advancement are generally the most qualified
in their own core competencies. Because the
Goldwater-Nichols Act stipulated the promotion
rate, assignment detailers are constrained
to nominate officers of at least comparable
quality to both service and joint assignments.
But congressional oversight has caused the
services to become risk-averse where jointness is
concerned, so the joint staffs routinely receive
the higher quality.

Next, Goldwater-Nichols has worked because
it incentivizes officers to serve in joint billets.
The reasons are threefold. First, officers compete
for joint assignments because they bring more
status than assignments on service staffs. Second,
most joint assignments have an operational
flavor that is generally preferred over service
staff assignments. Finally, such assignments are
required to achieve general or flag rank.

Another reason quality has gravitated to
joint staffs is that fighting jointly has become
more important, and a service often receives
missions in proportion to its participation in
planning and execution. A service provides its
better officers to joint staffs because it is most able
to protect and advance its institutional interests
in that environment. Essentially, the services
compete so some of their brightest officers have
the opportunity to perform in this increasingly
important environment. In turn, those officers
help the service compete for premier missions.

This profession recognizes that fighting
jointly is the only effective way to win in 21 st -
century warfare. There is an active effort to
develop and internalize the joint skills needed,
and the military must preserve its quality
management system. Preserving the system
ensures that joint force commanders will continue
to receive only the most qualified officers, who

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 97

■ joint professionals

can then contribute to the growing body of
knowledge concerning modern warfare.

Improvements Needed

Given the joint context in which future
wars will be decided, the wisest course is to
continue managing joint knowledge at the
broadest level while diffusing jointness to the
lowest level necessary. This provides the widest
dissemination of knowledge and prepares the
overall force more fully for joint warfare. It also
allows for quicker experimentation, validation,
and dissemination of emerging ideas to enhance
the body of joint knowledge. Finally, it offers the
widest base to develop and select joint experts for
staff and command positions. Two changes would
dramatically help accomplish this.

First, we must better leverage the joint
lessons learned (JLL) from previous exercises
and operations by establishing a Joint Doctrine
and Capabilities Center that links training and

education to joint experimentation and analysis
to help inform and shape the development of
future joint capabilities. This will ensure that we
maintain and properly promulgate the body of
expert knowledge our joint profession requires.

Second, we must create more standing joint
task forces to confront growing demand. This will
better meet combatant command requirements
and allow officers to fashion greater capacities for
employing all joint instruments while preserving
service core competencies. These changes
will maintain the joint profession and create
conditions where jointness truly becomes the
means to more effective military operations.

Joint Doctrine and Capabilities Center

The first step to establishing more effective
processes for incorporating JLL and doctrine is to
make JFCOM the standing repository for linking
service and joint lessons learned. Further, to
properly translate such lessons into doctrine and
capability requirements, JFCOM must continue to
transform into the Joint Doctrine and Capabilities
Center for the joint force. This will improve the
development and promulgation of joint doctrine,
requirements, and capabilities by allowing the
joint force provider to validate them, especially
when compared to the complex systems we
currently use.

With this authority, JFCOM would formulate,
staff, and approve the joint doctrine, requirements,
and capabilities the joint force needs. Placing the
service component command elements involved
in these areas directly under JFCOM would greatly
facilitate this.

Air Combat Command and Fleet Forces
Command already serve as the JFCOM Air Force
and Navy component commands, and they also
help develop these services' doctrine and tactical
fighter and ship requirements. These commands
could be expanded to look more holistically at
global requirements to resource the entire air and
naval forces while retaining their force provider
roles. The Army Training and Doctrine Command
(TRADOC) and the Marine Corps Combat
Development Command develop Army and
Marine Corps doctrine and requirements, and the
components of these commands that perform this
mission in a joint context could be transferred to
JFCOM to establish joint requirements for land
and littoral forces.

For the Army, this would require a
fundamental reorganization of both TRADOC
and Forces Command, but that may be long

98 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

C o s s

overdue. The other services have developed agile
doctrine and requirements shops within their
JFCOM component commands that also serve as
force providers, and the Army and Marine Corps
should as well.

JFCOM provides the most likely place to
integrate these functions for the joint force. It
is already the joint force provider, integrator,
and trainer and serves as the executive agent for
joint experimentation. Additionally, the Secretary
has used it to gather the lessons learned from
recent conflicts — a testament to the importance
he places on gathering a joint perspective of
future requirements. JFCOM could blend the
lessons learned into doctrine and a vision of
future capabilities while still allowing the services
to compete in both defining and fielding the
solution sets.

The solution sets would still need to be
reviewed and validated by JROC prior to service
acquisition. That would help ensure proper
synchronization with other service and joint
interoperability requirements. To level the playing
field, JFCOM should have a formal seat at JROC
to ensure that joint capabilities get equal billing.

The advantages of this system lie in creating
standing and dedicated analysts to manage each
capability area and having a more impartial
joint forum to advance the solution sets. These
forums could establish the joint standards each
solution set must meet, a step missing from the
separate service approaches, and these could
be programmed and then procured within the
current planning, programming, budgeting, and
execution processes already in place.

JFCOM provides a level of impartiality
in developing joint doctrine and requirements
since it is a joint headquarters. The time has
come to permanently assign it the mission of
developing the joint doctrine and capabilities the
joint force needs.

Standing Joint Headquarters

Recent operations have shown that
the U.S. Armed Forces are still not organized
to fully prosecute joint operations. The four-
star combatant command headquarters was
established as the joint organization that
executes enduring missions assigned to unified
commanders. For more time-sensitive missions,
combatant commanders have the authority to
create joint task forces; however, manning them
has been ad hoc and strains the services that
must provide the personnel. As an example, DOD

had some 35 standing JTFs in 2004. In Enduring
Freedom and Iraqi Freedom alone, U.S. Central
Command was augmented with over 3,000
additional billets it deemed necessary. Judging by
the progress, these JTFs appear more permanent
than temporary, yet they are still filled in an ad
hoc manner.

The time has come for the joint force to
be permanently organized at levels lower than
the combatant command headquarters. As a
start, each of the services' three-star headquarters
should be reorganized into joint headquarters.
That would establish a repository of deployable
joint headquarters capable of meeting the growing
demand for such elements without diverting
officers from other valid requirements. It would
preclude the need to form the JTFs in an ad hoc
manner and foster the type of joint capabilities
envisioned by the Goldwater-Nichols Act.

Jointness truly is the means to an end —
successful military operations. Goldwater-
Nichols moved the force dramatically forward
by providing the organizational structure and
joint officer management system, but it is now
time to create a better process for developing and
managing joint capabilities and doctrine and
for prosecuting joint missions. We do not need
to rewrite the Goldwater-Nichols Act to do this.
Rather we must codify the lessons of ongoing
operations by empowering JFCOM as the Joint
Doctrine and Capabilities Center for the joint
force and by establishing standing joint task force
headquarters from the existing service component
headquarters in each geographic and functional
combatant command. These efforts will further
enhance joint culture, improve joint warfighting,
and strengthen the joint profession. JFQ

NOTES

1 For a description and argument for a new joint
profession, see Don M. Snider, "Jointness, Defense
Transformation, and the Need for a New Joint Warfare
Profession," Parameters (Autumn 2003), 17-30.

2 Ibid, 19.

3 Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957); and Don
M. Snider et al., eds., The Future of the Army Profession
(Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), 6-9, 15, 24-32.

Do you have another point of view? Consider JFQ as
an outlet. See www.ndu.edu/inss/press/nduphp.html for

information on submitting articles and letters to the editor.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 99

Joint Operations in
the Southwest Pacific,

1943_1945

By KEVIN C. HOLZIMMER

I n the last strategically signifi-
cant amphibious landing in the
Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA)
during World War II, the Armed
Forces landed 175,000 men — organized
into I and XIV Corps — on a 20-mile
stretch of beach on the Philippine is-
land of Luzon. The operation capped
a 2-year campaign that spanned thou-
sands of miles of ocean and included
73 amphibious assaults. While difficult,
all of these landings and subsequent
actions succeeded. Indeed, U.S. joint

operations in SWPA — involving Army,
Navy, and air assets — contributed sig-
nificantly to Japan's defeat.

The few historians who have
treated joint operations in SWPA —
most prefer the Marine Corps in the
Central Pacific — fall into two schools.
The larger and more traditional school
argues that these operations succeeded
because the area had an overall com-
mander, General Douglas MacArthur,
USA, who unified the services. The
smaller and more recent school pins

success on General Walter Krueger,
USA, who not only helped develop
joint operations doctrine in the inter-
war era but also executed it as com-
mander of U.S. Sixth Army. However,
neither explanation is sufficient by
itself. This article examines joint opera-
tions prior to World War II and offers
an explanation for the success of joint
operations in SWPA despite the lack of
joint doctrine and command.

Reserved and Fastidious
versus the Frontier Type

The Army and Navy first seriously
considered joint operations in the wake
of the Spanish-American War. The
campaign against Santiago de Cuba,
in particular, starkly showed the two
services that planning and executing
joint operations required substantial in-
vestment. Army and Navy commanders
were subordinate to their own chains
of command instead of unifying under
a joint campaign commander. With no
way to develop or coordinate a single
plan, the services conceived their cam-
paigns independently. With the Spanish
squadron bottled up in Santiago Bay, for

Kevin C. Holzimmer is assistant professor of comparative military studies at Air
Command and Staff College.

lOO JFQ / issue thirty-eight

pjeno jseoo ST1

Holzimmer

example, Rear Admiral William Samp-
son of the North Atlantic Squadron —
described as a reserved and fastidious
technician — suggested that the Army,
under Major General William Shatter,
take out the fortifications guarding the
mouth of the bay so his ships could
engage the Spanish fleet. Overweight,
often profane, and called the "frontier
type" by his biographer, Paul Carlson,
Shatter wanted his V Corps to focus on
capturing Santiago itself.

These divergent views and per-
sonalities led to poor coordination and
likely prolonged the campaign. A short
time later, even after the Spanish fleet
had been sunk or grounded while at-
tempting to escape, Sampson refused
another request from the V Corps com-
mander to bombard Santiago de Cuba
and its fortifications on the grounds
that the Army had not yet cleared the
entrance of the bay so his ships could
safely pass.

Assessing the two commanders'
roles in the ineffective joint operations,
Carlson concluded that:

[Shatter and Sampson] could not cooper-
ate. Too often Shafter thought in terms of
a frontier command where he alone held
authority and did not, could not, share
responsibility for success or failure of an
expedition. Conditioned by such narrow
thinking and piqued by the difficulties
with Sampson, Shafter refused to recognize
the equal role the Navy shared in the war.
His position wrecked chances for a smooth
campaign, but Shafter was not alone at

fault. Sampson, too, possessed a short
temper as well as a desire to claim the
major honors for success in war. 1

Just as the joint military opera-
tion lacked an overall coherent strat-
egy, the landing operations reflected
a lack of prewar consideration. Ships

were loaded in haphazard fashion, as-
sembled from a wide variety of sources,
and approached the landing sites with-
out a standard operating procedure.
Chaos marked the actual landing as
the Army lacked adequate command
and control procedures and enough
boats. As William Atwater suggested:

In sharp contrast to the relatively efficient
Navy/Marine Corps landing at Guanta-
namo, the Army and Navy in a slipshod
operation barely managed to put ashore
an expeditionary force at Daiquiri, about
15 miles east of Santiago. The entire
amphibious phase of this expedition was
marked by inefficiency, inexperience, and
simple incompetence. 2

Two themes concerning joint op-
erations emerged from the war with
Spain. The first surrounds the tactical
issue of procedures that govern load-
ing, transporting, and landing troops
on hostile shores. The second and more
contentious theme involves command.
As Shatter's and Sampson's divergent
plans illustrate, deciding who com-
mands joint operations is paramount.
Throughout the first half of the 20 th
century, the Army and Navy settled
the first issue but not the second. They
failed to articulate a doctrine for estab-
lishing unified command structures
in joint operations between the Span-
ish-American War and World War II
and beyond.

Nevertheless, largely owing to
joint operations problems in the war
with Spain, the ser-
vices did address the
issue, specifically at
the Army and Naval
War Colleges and
the Joint Army and
Navy Board (created
in 1903 and usually called the Joint
Board). The Armed Forces published
documents that addressed joint opera-
tions throughout the early 20 th cen-
tury. While many dealt with the tac-
tical issue of landing procedures and
made great strides in formalizing ways
for the Army and Navy to reach and

then assault beaches, none adequately
addressed who would command the
joint force. In fact, while the War and
Navy Departments tried to create a
common doctrine for joint command,
the proposed solutions often caused
more confusion.

Cheerful Cooperation

The years up to 1941 fall into
three periods of thinking about joint
command. The first was introduced
by a 1905 Army and Naval War Col-
lege study, Rules for Navy Convoy. Re-
vised in 1917, the inquiry suggested
that command arrangements in a joint
operation should not rely on a single
joint commander, but on cooperation,
which Atwater described as "a form of
command whereby neither . . . com-
mander would be placed in an infe-
rior position or be placed under the
command of the other. Command is-
sues would be settled by agreement
and compromise . . . rather than by
issuance of an order." 3 While pains
were taken to define separate Army
and Navy functions to minimize fric-
tion, the War and Navy Departments
never tackled exactly how this coop-
eration would work under the stress
of war. Instead they left command to
the whims of individuals who were in
actual command of their respective ser-
vice components. An officer wrote in
1910, "Above all else is the importance
of a hearty and cheerful cooperation
between the two services in all matters
pertaining to these operations." 4

The issue of command was further
clouded, if relying on cheerfulness did
not sufficiently cloud it, when Joint
Army and Navy Action in Coast Defense
(JANA) of 1920 replaced the principle
of cooperation with that of paramount
interest, which gave command to ei-
ther an Army or Navy officer, based on
which service "function and require-
ments are, at the time, of the greater
importance." In this second period, the
joint commander had the authority
to designate missions for both services
while the subordinate commander
did not yield actual command of his

the Army and Navy failed to articulate a
doctrine for establishing unified command
structures in joint operations between the
Spanish-American War and World War II

issue thirty-eight / JFQ lOI

■ joint operations in the southwest pacific

own forces. Obviously that would
only work with a common concep-
tion of the circumstances making one's
service functions and requirements
of "greater importance." Neither edi-
tion of JANA defined the parameters
of "function and requirements." As
Atwater concluded, "The problem in
utilizing this form of coordination is

case would have to be dealt with on
its own merits." As the Santiago cam-
paign made clear, two strong-willed
individuals leading their own service
components may have radically differ-
ent notions.

The third period in the evolution
of joint command came after the fail-
ure of a joint Army-Navy exercise in
1938. As a result, Admiral Wil-
liam Leahy, Chief of Naval Op-
erations, suggested in the late
1930s that the services should
replace the unworkable system
of paramount interest. He re-
jected the principle of unity of
command except through Presiden-
tial mandate and instead advocated
the old concept of cooperation. Gen-
eral Malin Craig, Chief of Staff of the
Army, agreed, and it was made official

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander, Southwest
Pacific, surveying beachhead on Leyte Island, 1944

in Change Number 2 to Joint Action of
the Army and Navy (1935) in 1938. The
return to cooperation left the Armed
Forces without a coherent doctrine of
joint command on the eve of World
War II. As Atwater pointed out, the
adoption was a "tragic choice" that
caused confusion not only for com-
manders at Pearl Harbor who faced the
Japanese attack on December 7, 1941,
but also for leaders on the operational
level who had to create and execute
plans that would help translate tactical
military victories into strategic wins.

Moving against and landing troops
on enemy-held beaches emerged as the
only bright point in joint operations
through the first half of the 20 th cen-
tury. Both the Army and Navy worked
the issue through extensive joint ma-
neuvers and such publications as An
Overseas Expedition (1923) and Joint
Overseas Expeditions (1933). 5 Despite
the success of amphibious landings,
thorny issues of joint command were
never settled beyond vague notions of
cooperation.

Just as service leaders faced their
tasks without a coherent and usable
joint command doctrine, the internal
command arrangements in SWPA did
not foster an institutional or organiza-
tional structure suitable for joint op-
erations. While historians often assert
that MacArthur was the de facto op-
erational joint commander, the specific
command arrangements suggest other-
wise. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) —
with the approval of President Franklin
Roosevelt — limited MacArthur's ability
to command troops assigned to him
when SWPA was created in March
1942. MacArthur was ineligible to di-
rectly command any national force,
unlike Admiral Chester Nimitz.

Furthermore, MacArthur never at-
tempted to act as a joint commander
despite JCS restrictions. Nor did he ap-
point one, although he had the author-
ity. Instead, the SWPA commander's
standard way of conducting an opera-

landing troops on enemy-held
beaches emerged as the only bright
point in joint operations through
the first half of the 20 th century

how to define the circumstances under
which it would apply and then assign-
ing command to a particular service.

What 'paramount interest' meant in a
practical sense was that each specific

102 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Holzimmer

tion was to provide a broad directive,
stating both objectives and the forces
available. It was then up to his lieuten-
ants of all services to breathe life into
his strategic plan. It was up to them to
bury interservice rivalry. And it was up
to them to plan, integrate, and execute
the operation. In short, operations for
all practical purposes fell under the
challenging principle of cooperation
rather than unity of command.

An Attitude without
Service Bias

In light of the limitations that
worked against joint operations — lack
of joint operational doctrine and
MacArthur's command structure — it
is useful to consider how SWPA staffs
planned joint operations before exam-
ining why they succeeded.

Although MacArthur was not the
operational commander and refused
to appoint one, he sought to establish
a command system that was often a
throwback to the principle of coop-
eration. Subordinate organizations in-
cluded three service commands: Allied
Land Forces, Allied Naval Forces, and
Allied Air Forces. Complicating this
organization was that in early 1943,
MacArthur designated his major Army
formation, Sixth Army under General
Walter Krueger, as Alamo Force, thereby
keeping his ground forces independent
of Allied Land Forces, led by Australian
General Sir Thomas Blarney. The lead-
ers of the Army, naval, and air units
were to coordinate their planning in
the absence of a joint task force com-
mander. MacArthur's own instructions
to his lieutenants betray the lack of
doctrine or serious consideration of
the demands of joint operations. His
component commanders were to rely
on "personal relationships" to plan
and execute their missions. His head-
quarters had "developed an attitude...
without service bias," a notion many
Navy, Marine, and Army Air Corps per-
sonnel eventually found unlikely.

In practice, MacArthur designated
Krueger to coordinate planning for the
ground, naval, and air forces. As the of-

ficial Army historian put it, "Krueger's
authority to coordinate planning gave
him a preeminent position; he was first
among equals.'' 6 Ironically, on arriving
in early 1943, Krueger argued against
MacArthur's command arrangement
and urged the SWPA commander to
adopt the principle of unity of com-
mand. Throughout the interwar era,
Krueger was one of the few officers
who thought carefully about joint op-
erations. As early as 1925, he concluded
that unity of command must be ad-
opted instead of the principles of mu-
tual cooperation or paramount interest.
Now working in a joint environment,
Krueger found MacArthur's arrange-
ment awkward at best and dangerous at
worst. Nevertheless, MacArthur would
not budge. From 1943 until the end
of the war, when the bulk of offensive
operations took place in SWPA, the
services would have to cooperate de-
spite differences in culture and perspec-
tive. Krueger reflected in 1947 that "our
command arrangements in [SWPAJ left
a good deal to be desired. . . . There is
no doubt in my mind that split com-
mand, especially in a crisis, is fatal.

To be sure, we had excellent coopera-
tion — but we were lucky.'' 7

Acting as coordinator, Krueger
had to make the system work, lucky or
not. After receiving MacArthur's broad
directives — again usually covering
objectives, mission, and forces — the
principal commanders would offer any
objections, which could be handled
by letter, radio, or conference. Overall,
however, the directives were accepted
without much disagreement.

Krueger would next assemble a
joint planning group (JPG) within
Sixth Army to work on the particular
operation. Usually headed by Krueger's
component operations staff officer,
the group included members from
the naval and air forces and met at
Sixth Army headquarters. Krueger only
intervened if the members could not
solve their disagreements, which were
usually interservice. Then he would
consult his air and naval counterparts.
As Krueger recalled, "It is remarkable
that we always managed to adjust ex-
isting differences, and it was this and
the spirit of cooperation displayed by
ground, naval, and air forces that made

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 103

Troops watching U.S. and Japanese
planes fighting while preparing to
land on Leyte Island, October 1944

it possible for us to operate as an Army-
Navy-air forces team." 8

Once JPG finalized its plan, it
needed approval from the ground,
naval, and air commanders, usually at
a commanders' conference. Although
Krueger suggested that "all spade work
had as a rule been done by the joint
planners [by conference time]," 9 there
was often considerable haggling over
issues that needed the attention of the
commanders. Whether by telephone,
radio, letter, or conference, divisive is-
sues invariably got hammered out.

Improving Coordination

By examining an operation, we
may obtain a clearer picture of the joint
planning process in SWPA. The Hol-
landia campaign ( Reckless ) merits con-
sideration because it was conducted as
the planning process began to mature.

As the official Army historian pointed
out, "Indeed, the planning for Hol-
landia provides an excellent case study
for most amphibious undertakings in
the Southwest Pacific." 10

While command in SWPA can-
not be described as organizationally
or structurally unified, other factors
made the exercise difficult on the op-
erational level not only for Hollandia,
but also for other operations. Vice
Admiral Daniel Barbey, commander
of Seventh Amphibious Force, recalled
the locations of the headquarters
of the various commanders during
Reckless planning:

General MacArthur was in Brisbane, Aus-
tralia. Admiral Nitnitz was in Pearl Har-
bor. General Krueger, the commander of
the Sixth Army . . . was at Finschhafen
[Papua New Guinea]. General [Robert]

Eichelberger, who would command the
ground forces, was at Goodenough Island,
three hundred miles to the eastward. My
flagship was anchored at Buna, about
midway between the two places. Air Force
headquarters was at Brisbane, and the
headquarters of those bits of the Austra-
lian Navy that would operate under my
command was at Melbourne. The various
units of the Central Pacific Force that were
involved were scattered from the Hawaiian
Islands to the Solomons. 11

MacArthur's headquarters was
over 1,500 miles from Sixth Army's.
"Joint planning," Barbey concluded,
"posed more than the usual problems
because of the great distances." 12

Formal planning for Reckless began
March 5, 1944, after the receipt of the
general headquarters (GHQ) SWPA
order, but actual planning began in the

104 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

U.S. Coast Guard

Holzimmer

wake of the Admiralty Islands success.
According to Krueger, a series of confer-
ences took place to refine the plan his
JPG created. The meetings included
the obligatory commanders' conference
consisting of Major General Stephen
Chamberlain, G-3, GHQ SWPA; Major
General Ennis Whitehead, commander,
Fifth Air Force; and Major General
James Frink, commander, U.S. Service
of Supply, along with Krueger and Bar-
bey. Several days later, a task force com-
manders' conference was held at Sixth
Army headquarters at Finschhafen, at-

whether by telephone, radio, letter, or
conference, divisive issues invariably
got hammered out

tended by Fieutenant General Robert
Eichelberger, commander, I Corps, who
led one task force, and Brigadier Gen-
eral Jens Doe, who led another. The
commanders discussed the timing of
D-day and H-hour, securing air supe-
riority, shipping schedules, deception
measures, naval support, command ar-
rangements, and intelligence reports.
More conferences followed, including
one in Brisbane at GHQ SWPA and an-
other involving Alamo Force and Sev-
enth Amphibious Fleet. The last took
place April 12 between the staffs of
Krueger and Barbey on the headquar-
ters ship of the fleet and apparently
finalized shipping issues for the over-
water movement of personnel, equip-
ment, and supplies. The frank tone
described in accounts of the meetings
showed that if a joint atmosphere did
not permeate GHQ SWPA, it existed at
headquarters Sixth Army.

While these conferences were
important, they do not tell the whole
story. The journal of Sixth Army head-
quarters shows a steady stream of com-
manders of all services coming and
going throughout the planning of Reck-
less, demonstrating a less formal yet
intensive joint planning process than
Krueger suggests. Distances between
headquarters notwithstanding, these
visits indicate the degree to which

Army, Navy, and air leaders worked to
forge a joint operational planning team.

There were problems. Navy com-
manders felt overshadowed by the Army
in the planning process. During the
Hollandia operation, Barbey suggested
that the Army use a different landing
beach than Krueger's staff offered and
believed the Army was rejecting Navy
advice. Krueger responded that Barbey
was the one placing naval over military
interests and offered a lengthy critique
of Barbey's proposal. The Sixth Army
commander reminded Barbey that
while the beaches the admi-
ral proposed would be bet-
ter for the Navy, they would
place the ground forces of
Reckless "in a pocket from
which they may find it ex-
tremely difficult and time-consuming to
extricate themselves in order to attain
their objective." Nevertheless, Krueger
admitted that the alternate site might
indeed be better after "further study and
reconnaissance." In the end, the Sixth
Army site was used and proved the right
choice. Having rejected Barbey's sugges-
tion, Krueger told him, "While I am
not unmindful of the naval difficulties
you present, such as the necessity of
minesweeping, I urge that you give seri-
ous consideration to the disadvantages
to the ground forces when the naval
viewpoint is given undue weight in the
selection of landing beaches." 13

Such frank exchanges occurred
not only in planning, but also as op-
erations were ongoing. During the
land campaign against the Japanese on
Leyte, for example, planes of Fifth U.S.
Air Force, commanded by Fieutenant
General George Kenney, strafed Ameri-
can troops. In a fit of anger, Krueger
fired a radio message to Kenney blam-
ing Fifth Air Force for deliberately at-
tacking his men. Kenney reacted defen-
sively. After a heated conversation with
Krueger's chief of staff, he talked with
Krueger personally. During this conver-
sation, Krueger not only apologized for
the accusations but also agreed to work
with Kenney on improving coordina-
tion between their services.

The joint planning process for
Hollandia, along with the Leyte in-
cident, demonstrated that while the
Navy sometimes felt shunned by the
Army and there was interservice bick-
ering over serious issues, overall plan-
ning took place in a joint environment
on the operational level largely due to
Walter Krueger, who was responsible
for planning. But beyond that, what
enabled effective joint planning and
execution remains unclear. One might
argue that, unlike during the Spanish-
American War, the personalities were
more conducive to a joint environment
so the principle of cooperation worked.
But that thesis does not recognize that
SWPA commanders could be as unco-
operative as their counterparts 50 years
before. Krueger was criticized as being
stubborn and difficult to work with.
Kenney was outspoken and confident
to the point of arrogance. Barbey was
known as self-serving and pushy.

Military Managers and the
Applicatory Method

Neither personalities nor concepts
of command arrangements in joint op-
erations changed significantly after the
Spanish-American War and therefore
cannot account for the joint success in
SWPA. However, both the way senior
commanders viewed their profession
and the manner in which high-ranking
officers worked together did fundamen-
tally change. What separates Sampson
and Shatter from Krueger, Barbey, Ken-
ney, and Rear Admiral Thomas Kinkaid
in terms of organizing and executing
joint operations is the rise in the early
and middle 20 th century of what Morris
Janowitz characterizes as the manage-
rial style of military leadership. Janow-
itz utilizes heroic and managerial styles
to explain the modern professional
officer corps:

The history of the modern military es-
tablishment can be described as a strug-
gle between heroic leaders, who embody
traditionalism and glory, and military
"managers," who are concerned with the
scientific and rational conduct of war.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 105

■ joint operations in the southwest pacific

This distinction is fundamental. The mili-
tary manager reflects the scientific and
pragmatic dimensions of warmaking; he
is the professional with effective links to
civilian society . 14

What stands out is characteriza-
tion of the military manager as "con-
cerned with the scientific and ratio-
nal conduct of war" and "pragmatic

dimensions of warmaking." Also of
note in Janowitz's thinking is the divi-
sion of managerial style leaders into
"skill groups," one being the staff of-
ficer — "essentially a specialist in coor-
dination." While not all senior com-
manders in SWPA could be classified
as solely staff officers, they were com-
petent in staff work, as was manifested
through the planning and execution of
joint operations.

To be an effective staff officer, one
must cultivate the ability to commu-
nicate and work with others. Explains
Janowitz:

Interpersonal skill is of the essence for
those who must operate in the ever-chang-
ing environment of the higher levels of
military administration. . . . The results
reveal that, for officers from all three ser-
vices, the higher the administrative level,
the greater the emphasis on interpersonal
skill. . . . The conference technique is not
a foreign importation, but an inevitable
aspect of modern managerial techniques . 15

The conferences and the overall
dialogue between SWPA commanders
betray the high degree of coordination
and communication, especially com-
pared to the Spanish-American War.

While several institutions and fac-
tors played a role in developing the
managerial style, one stands out with
regard to joint operations in SWPA:
education, derived specifically from the
Army and Naval War Colleges. Educa-

tion — receiving information about a
subject — does not mean the same thing
as managerial style here. Shafter and
Sampson, Civil War veterans, were well
aware of the joint operations in that
war. That knowledge did not translate
into a joint working environment. An
increased emphasis on the larger dimen-
sions of strategy and operations at the
war colleges contributed to the manage-
rial style. However, the
collective approach to
learning and planning
in professional mili-
tary education (PME)
no doubt helped turn
officers from heroic to managerial lead-
ers, particularly in its emphasis on the
cooperative nature of managerial lead-
ers. From their days at intermediate and
senior service schools, these officers
worked in groups and seminars, analyz-
ing readings and lectures, planning and
executing war games, and participat-
ing in problem-solving exercises. Many
activities involved joint considerations,
and all were part of the applicatory
method of instruction adopted by both
war colleges in the early 20 th century.
That method proved to be the most
important mechanism of PME in creat-
ing managerial officers and was vital to
joint operations in the absence of joint
doctrine and command arrangements.

Modified from the German appli-
catory method, the American version
was an approach to solving military
problems. Both the Army and Naval
War Colleges adopted the same basic
educational methodology in 1903 and
1909, respectively. The first phase — the
heart of the method — was the estimate
of the situation, described by the Naval
War College faculty as a "logical pro-
cess of thought, which, applied to a
concrete strategical or tactical problem,
enables one to arrive at a definite stra-
tegical or tactical decision." The early
list that comprised the estimate incor-
porated four considerations: the mis-
sion; enemy force strength, disposition,
and intentions; friendly force strength,
disposition, and available courses of
action; and the decision.

The second phase of the applica-
tory method was to translate the deci-
sion into clear orders for subordinates.
The third phase translated "the mental
processes into action” for "carrying out
on the field or in the game the tactical
or strategical dispositions made in the
order." In other words, the final phase
evaluated the estimate of the situation
and the orders to subordinates through
wargaming.

While the colleges adopted the
method in the early 20 th century, both
schools had the goal of creating a truly
corporate atmosphere from the be-
ginning. Admiral Stephen Luce, first
president of the Naval War College,
remarked that in his institution, "Of-
ficers meet together to discuss ques-
tions pertaining to higher branches of
their profession." 16 Similarly, the Army
War College stressed that "solutions to
problems were found by a group, not
by the individual." 17

In a lecture at the Naval War Col-
lege in 1914, for example, Captain Wil-
liam Sims, who became president in
1917, expanded on Luce's vision, em-
phasizing that the conference method
of learning was central: "The War Col-
lege is an organized body of naval of-
ficers who are trying to arrive at the
truth concerning the best methods of
conducting war. . . . The basis of its
methods of research is discussion. This
discussion is free and frank. . . . The
War College is a team." Contrasting
the traditional method of command in
which "the old man" made a decision
on his own — a characteristic of the
heroic leader — the "organized-team”
concept promoted an atmosphere in
which ideas were raised, discussed,
and passed to the commander, who
made the final decision based in part
on his staff's work. Concluded Sims,
"The conference method develops a
real team spirit, and this makes every-
thing else comparatively easy. The of-
ficers feel that to them alone — to their
team — is due the credit." 18

The Army War College likewise
fostered teamwork as an essential fea-
ture of modern warfare. Extolling the

senior commanders were competent in
staff work, as was manifested through the
planning and execution of joint operations

106 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

Holzimmer

Destruction of Admiral Cervera’s
Spanish fleet off Santiago, Cuba, 1898

virtues of joint effort for the General
Staff as Sims did for the Navy, Major
George C. Marshall lectured the college
in 1922 about what makes a general
staff officer, a position for which the
college prepared students. He suggested
that the Army needed the spirit of "per-
fect cooperation" and "a sympathetic
understanding with the other elements
of the Army. . . . The success of the War
Department General Staff, however, is
believed to depend primarily on the
diligent efforts of its membership to
promote a spirit of cooperation and,
most important of all, to develop and
maintain a sympathetic attitude of un-
derstanding with the services and line
of the Army.” A successful commander
is "aware of the vital importance of
maintaining a spirit of good will and

generous understanding among the
officers of the command. He realizes
the battle cannot be won without an
harmonious, united effort." 19 An Army
leader had to listen, understand, and
work with his colleagues, skills that
were taught and practiced by students
both in Washington and Newport.

Although both Sims and Marshall
emphasized the need to work with
one's own service, they taught a way
of working within groups, including
interservice groups. Within this frame-
work of the applicatory system, stu-
dents and faculty alike explored the
possibilities and systemic shortcom-
ings of joint operations within the War
and Navy Departments. Krueger — who
instructed at both colleges during the
interwar period — taught that should

the two services not formalize the is-
sues of command in joint operations,
they "must have a common, definite
understanding of their respective func-
tions in national defense and of the
best method for attaining coordination
in operations. . . . They must speak the
same language." 20 This ability came in
large part from PME offering a formal
setting in which to analyze, discuss,
and provide solutions via the appli-
catory method. Reflecting on joint
operations in SWPA, Krueger told the
Armed Forces Staff College in 1947,
"Many problems arising during the op-
erations themselves, due to conflicting
demands that seemed incapable of ad-
justment, required much time, energy,
and patience for solution . . . clearly
[indicating] the vital necessity of close

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 107

■ joint operations in the southwest pacific

and sympathetic understanding ... of
the powers, limitations, and require-
ments of the other services ." 21

With applicatory instruction in ad-
vanced PME, it was no longer expected
that leaders such as Shatter would by
themselves formulate battle plans based
on their own experience and expertise
in complex joint operations. No lon-
ger was the individualistic and heroic
leader the ideal. Instead, officers col-
lectively analyzed issues from a broader
vantage point, seeking inputs from sis-
ter-service counterparts. With the rise
of the managerial style — introduced
in part via PME — the commanders of
SWPA defaulted to skills they acquired
at the war colleges. Within a coopera-
tive framework, they first analyzed the
problem before planning and finally
executing, perhaps not even recogniz-
ing that the frontier individualism of

Missing 9

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public institutions. Please send your
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the old Army epitomized by Shafter
had passed. The managerial style of
leadership that allowed cooperation to
work at all is what explains the success
of joint operations in SWPA.

Being military managers allowed
SWPA leaders to function on the op-
erational level without a unified com-
mand structure or a history of joint
doctrine. While the personal charac-
teristics of Krueger, Kinkaid, and Ken-
ney resembled those of Shafter and
Sampson, their ability to settle per-
sonal and professional differences dur-
ing both planning and operations by
conference, letter, radio, and telephone
demonstrated the degree to which the
managerial style had overtaken the
senior military leadership. Facing the
complexity of joint operations in the
absence of a unified task force com-
mander, the Army, Navy, and air com-
manders resorted to the techniques of
analyzing problems and decisionmak-
ing they employed in the war colleges
in the interwar period. The manage-
rial style thus played its biggest role in
SWPA in how the service commanders
thought and solved problems. It was
not doctrine, knowledge, or organiza-
tion that played the decisive factor, but
rather a mental outlook. JFQ

NOTES

1 Paul H. Carlson, "Pecos Bill": A Mili-
tary Biography of William R. Shafter (College
Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989),
172.

2 William Felix Atwater, "United States
Army and Navy Development of Joint Land-
ing Operations 1898-1942" (Ph.D. disserta-
tion, Duke University, 1986, UMI order no.
8718403), 8.

3 Ibid., 22.

4 Wyatt I. Selkirk, "The Co-Operation
of Land and Sea Forces," Journal of the Mili-
tary Service Institution of the United States
(March-April 1910), 324.

5 General Service Schools and Naval
War College, An Overseas Expedition: A Joint
Army and Navy Problem (Fort Leavenworth:
General Service Schools Press, 1923); War
Department and Navy Department, Joint Over-
seas Expeditions (Washington, DC: Govern-
ment Printing Office, 1929, re. 1933).

6 John Miller, Jr., "Cartwheel: The Re-
duction of Rabaul," United States Army in
World War II: The War in the Pacific (Wash-
ington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military
History, 1959), 26.

7 Walter Krueger, letter to Oscar W.
Griswold, February 14, 1947, Krueger Pa-
pers, box 11, U.S. Military Academy, West
Point, NY.

8 Walter Krueger, From Down Under to
Nippon: The Story of Sixth Army in World War
II (Washington, DC: Combat Forces Press,
1953), 136-37.

9 Ibid., 137.

10 Robert R. Smith, "The Approach to
the Philippines," United States Army in World
War II: The War in the Pacific (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1979),
13-52.

11 Daniel E. Barbey, MacArthur’s Am-
phibious Navy: Seventh Amphibious Force Op-
erations, 1943-1945 (Annapolis: U.S. Naval
Institute Press, 1969), 159-160.

12 Ibid., 159.

13 Walter Krueger, letter to Daniel E.
Barbey, March 26, 1944, Krueger Papers, box
7, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY.

14 Morris Janowitz, The Professional Sol-
dier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York:
The Free Press, 1971), 21.

15 Ibid., 70-71.

16 Stephen B. Luce, address to Naval
War College, 1896, Naval War College Ar-
chives, Record Group 1.

17 Harry P. Ball, Of Responsible Com-
mand: A History of the U.S. Army War College
(Carlisle Barracks, PA: The Alumni Associa-
tion of the U.S. Army War College, 1983),
194.

18 William S. Sims, "Naval War College
Principles and Methods Applied Afloat,"
U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 41, no. 2
(March-April 1915), 386, 401.

19 George C. Marshall, "The Develop-
ment of the General Staff," lecture, Army
War College, September 19, 1922, in The Pa-
pers of George Catlett Marshall, volume 1, The
Soldierly Spirit, ed. Larry I. Bland (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981),
216-217.

20 Walter Krueger, "Command: The Mil-
itary Command System," lecture, Naval War
College, 1930-1931, 23, Krueger Papers, box
16, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, NY.

21 Walter Krueger, "Command Responsi-
bilities in a Joint Operation," lecture, Armed
Forces Staff College, April 18, 1947, 3-4,
Krueger Papers, box 12, U.S. Military Acad-
emy, West Point, NY.

108 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

OFF THE SHELF ■

A Book Review

By BARRY WATTS

Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions
in Military Affairs and the
Evidence of History

by Colin S. Gray
London: Frank Cass, 2002
310 pp. $33.95
| ISBN: 0-714-65186-9]

trategy for Chaos by Colin S.

Gray is an uneven work of good
intentions. Its goal is to use the
concepts of revolutions in military
affairs (RMAs) and nonlinearity to
improve understanding of war and
strategy by balancing pure theory and
the singularities of military history. Gray
observes that social scientists have been
prone to force square pegs of military
history into round holes of theory
regardless of the resulting distortions.
Conversely, military historians have been
chary of even modest generalizations
from the historical record on the
grounds that events are unique both in
themselves and in context. Strategy for
Chaos attempts to avoid erring in either
direction by elucidating the "nature,
structure, and dynamics" of both war
and strategy while respecting history by
reviewing the RMAs of the Napoleonic
period, World War I, and the Cold War
nuclear era.

There is much that is sensible,
praiseworthy, and even true in the
resulting book. Gray argues, for example,
that insofar as strategy and war are
fundamentally about use of organized
violence between opposing polities to
achieve their conflicting ends, their
natures have never changed, nor
are they likely to regardless of how
"revolutionary” alterations in warfighting
may prove to be. Conversely, he insists
that the character of war and strategy is
"ever changing” in response to changes
in society, economics, technology,
and politics.

Gray's first point was made repeatedly
by Carl von Clausewitz, perhaps most
memorably when he observed that war
can have its own means or "grammar,"
but not its own ends or "logic." Gray's
second point is more obvious to those
who have lived through the emergence
of nuclear weapons and airliners being
flown into buildings than it may have
been to Clausewitz. Both theoretical
claims have broad empirical support and,
taken together, offer a needed corrective
to much of the conceptual and verbal
excesses in the RMA and nonlinearity-of-
war literature. Gray is right to condemn
incautious assertions — even by American
Secretaries of Defense — that precision
munitions or cyberspace weapons are
altering the nature of war or strategy.

Nevertheless, the book is not entirely
successful in laying out either theory or
evidence. Because certain misconceptions
have become so widespread in RMA
debates, this review attempts to clarify
two key points: the central implication
of nonlinear dynamics for war and
strategy, and the historical origins of the
RMA hypothesis in the Department of
Defense (DOD).

Gray's deepest concern about
nonlinearity and strategy is their seeming
incompatibility. If war is chaotic, how can
purposeful strategy be possible? Gray's

solution is to argue that "the proposition
that it is the nature of war to be chaotic
[is] an insightful fallacy. ... A misreading
of Clausewitz on the importance of
friction, chance, risk, and uncertainty in
war, combined with an appreciation of
the chaotic conditions of actual combat,
has encouraged a newly orthodox view
that chaos rules in war and, in reality,
over strategy." This orthodoxy, he
concludes, is mistaken.

The main argument behind these
conclusions is in Gray's fourth chapter.
Given the confusion between nonlinear
and complex-adaptive systems evident
in phrases such as "chaos-complexity-
nonlinearity theory,” Gray's reasoning
is not easy to follow. For example, he
appears unaware that the dynamical
systems of physics, whether linear or
nonlinear, process information strictly
through mechanical iteration, whereas
complex-adaptive systems such as
humans and stock markets look for
regularities or patterns that can be
condensed into schemata describing
aspects of reality and then act on those
schemata, a radically different way of
processing information. Moreover, he
concedes that "strategy is nonlinear
in that strategic consequences,
or effectiveness, can show radical
discontinuities." Such discontinuities
clearly suggest a loss of universal
predictability in strategy, which is a
key feature of nonlinear systems. Yet
Gray also insists that "much of strategic
behavior is linear” and subject to
"sensible prediction," and therefore
purposeful predictive strategy can
confound chaos. In summarizing his
assessment of three historical RMAs —
Napoleonic France, imperial Germany,
and the Soviet Union in the nuclear era —
he argues that all three were "massively
overmatched by their enemies," which
is to say that "the bigger battalions"
eventually won all three contests.

Ignored, however, are cases such as the
American failure in Vietnam and the
Spanish conquest of the Incas in which
the bigger battalions lost.

The larger question in Strategy
for Chaos is whether the absence of

Lieutenant Colonel Barry Watts, USAF (Ret.), is a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments.

issue thirty-eight / JFQ 109

■ off the shelf

universal predictability for combat
outcomes renders strategy moot. This
reviewer's answer is a resounding no. If
combat outcomes were computationally
reducible in the way the movements
of the planets around the sun are, then
appropriately programmed computers
could replace strategists. War's
nonlinearities are what make strategy an
art, demanding rare levels of discernment
and judgment (Clausewitz's coup d'oeil).
Rather than rejecting nonlinearity
in strategy, Gray the strategist ought
to embrace it. But like 18 th - and 19 th -
century physicists such as Pierre Simon
de Laplace, he feels compelled to
insist that strategy is for the most part
predictable, when in truth predictability
can vanish in the next moment with
devastating strategic consequences.

Turning to the origins of RMA
discussions in DOD, Gray asserts
that "various official and commercial
patrons ... in the 1990s undoubtedly
were motivated largely by parochial —
albeit legitimate — concerns of U.S.
defence policy and even simply by
business opportunity." Given his
acknowledgement of Andrew Marshall's
role in pushing him to declare where
he stands on the RMA debate, this
denigrating characterization of how and
why the debate emerged does not reflect
the facts as this reviewer understands
them. After Marshall became the Director
of Net Assessment in 1973, he saw
the need to develop plausible Soviet
assessments of the nuclear competition
with the United States and the military
balance in Europe. While that effort took
over a decade to mature, it became the
single most important body of research
he pursued from 1973 to the end of the
Cold War. Besides a substantial impact on
the major assessments Marshall's office
produced during the 1980s, this research
also provided insight into Soviet thinking
about past and future military-technical
revolutions (MTRs).

Reflection on Soviet theorizing
together with ongoing technical
advances in guided weapons, sensors, and
automated control systems led Marshall,
through the late-1980s Commission

on Long-Term Integrated Strategy, to
conclude that changes in the conduct of
war lay ahead. Further, based on historical
research into the period 1918-1939,
he suspected that these changes, when
integrated with new operational concepts
and organizational arrangements,
would be as significant for war's conduct
as was the rise of blitzkrieg, strategic
bombardment, and carrier aviation
during the interwar period. Marshall’s
subsequent decision to undertake an
MTR assessment for the Secretary of
Defense, far from being either parochial
or casual, was made for the eminently
serious purpose of alerting senior DOD
decisionmakers to prospective changes in
the conduct of war. Moreover, Marshall
substituted the term revolution in military
affairs for MTR in July 1993 to emphasize
the importance of operational concepts
and organizational adaptations in turning
technological advances into greater
military effectiveness. Strategy for Chaos
distorts the origins of the RMA debate by
ignoring this early history.

Contrary to Gray's claim that the
debate was merely about definitions,
Marshall's choice of the term hypothesis
to refer to the possibility of far-reaching
changes in war signified that the
reality and character of the conjectured
revolution were matters of fact. Gray's
argument that RMAs are moot unless
they can directly produce victory is itself
predicated on a definitional sleight of
hand, namely conflating strategic and
military effectiveness.

Williamson Murray's assessment
that Strategy for Chaos "has framed
debate about RMAs for the foreseeable
future" seems overblown. First, the
changes in American military practice
from 1991 to 2003, of which growing
reliance on guided weapons is but the
tip of the iceberg, are too substantial
to be dismissed on such grounds as the
weakness of Arab opponents. Gray may
be correct in arguing that the military's
growing use of guided weapons does not
equate to an order-of-magnitude increase
in strategic effectiveness, but there
seems little doubt that such increases
in military effectiveness have occurred.

Second, there are historical cases in
which increases in military effectiveness
did drive the strategic outcome. Again,
the conquest of Amerindian civilizations
in the early 1500s is nigh impossible to
explain without acknowledging the roles
of Spanish weaponry (including horses),
tactical cohesion, and military culture. In
the Andes, for example, Spanish tactical
superiority crushed Incan forces time and
again no matter how heroic, tenacious,
skillfully led, or numerically superior
they were.

Despite these objections, Strategy for
Chaos will be of interest to those who
follow the RMA debate. The book is an
invaluable goad for thoughtful readers
to think beyond the RMA bumper
stickers and slogans Gray rightly
condemns and to determine their own
positions on the subject. JFQ

A Book Review

By JAKUB J. GRYGIEL

The Modern Prince:

What Leaders Need to Know Now

by Carnes Lord

New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003
304 pp. $26.00
[ISBN: 0-3001-0007-8]

F or a variety of reasons, ranging
from swinging academic trends
to the democratic dislike of great
men, the study of leadership is not a
popular field in modern political science.
Carnes Lord offers a valuable work that
goes against the prevailing fashion and
underscores the importance of leadership
in modern politics. The author, a
professor of strategy at the Naval War
College in Newport, Rhode Island, brings
to his work an impressive scholarship
combined with extensive policy

Jakub J. Grygiel is assistant professor of
international relations at the Paul H. Nitze
School of Advanced International Studies at
The Johns Hopkins University.

IIO JFQ / issue thirty-eight

OFF THE SHELF I

experience in the executive branch.

The Modern Prince is a highly readable
book in which classical wisdom on
leadership is incorporated with modern
examples of leaders. The result is a work
that analyzes such political theorists as
Aristotle, Tocqueville, James Madison,
John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, and
Machiavelli — and illustrates its points
using 20 th -century leaders from Bill
Clinton to Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew and
France's Charles de Gaulle.

The methodology is analogous to that
of the original Prince, written by Niccolo
Machiavelli. Like Carnes Lord, the
Florentine was a practitioner of politics,
but also, and most famously, a writer and
political theorist in 15 th -and 16 th -century
Italy. The purpose of Machiavelli's
Prince was to present, as he wrote in the
dedication, "knowledge of the deeds of
great men which I have acquired through
a long experience of modern events and
a constant study of the past." Lord does
exactly that, updating both the "modern
events" and the "past" to reflect current
political life.

The subject of The Modem Prince is
leadership. Lord begins by justifying
the need for leadership in a democracy.
There is a strong temptation to look at

history as an effect of impersonal forces,
not individuals. Democracies, according
to this view, are ruled by laws, not men,
and consequently great leaders are not
necessary for the well-functioning of
the state. But, as Lord observes, the
tendency in many modern democracies
is the opposite: the executive power is
becoming stronger, underscoring the
importance of knowing what leaders are
expected to do, what skills they need,
and what their strategic priority should
be. Moreover, democracies need leaders,
especially in moments of crisis when
"authoritative decisionmaking" capable
of resolving dangerous disputes between
different interests is indispensable
for the survival of the polity. Finally,
leaders are necessary because, in Lord's
words, they are "a vital mechanism for
bringing political knowledge to bear on
the business of politics." This political
knowledge is the key to understanding
the meaning of leadership.

What then should the "modern
prince" know? Lord shuffles through
the areas of indispensable knowledge,
from understanding strengths and
weaknesses of democracies to the
ability to manage elites in a society. On
a fundamental level, great leadership

the

Modern

% Prince

WHAT

LEADERS

need

TO KNOW
NOW

Carnes Lord

means a combination of what the
ancients defined as ars gerendi and ars
administrandi, which loosely translate
to the art of leadership and the art of
administration, strategy, tactics, vision,
and management.

The leader — the prince — cannot limit
his knowledge to one or the other because
that would imply knowing how to
administer politics without knowing the
goal, or vice versa, knowing the objective
but being ignorant of how to attain it.
Because leaders must be adept at both
vision and management, what they need,

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issue thirty-eight / JFQ I'll

■ off the shelf

according to Lord, is common sense.
Writing about strategy, which is one
aspect of leadership, Lord argues that it
"is a plan of action; it applies means or
resources to achieve a certain end; and it
presupposes an adversary. Understood in
such terms, strategy is really an element
of common sense, something that
pervades much of daily life." Leadership,
therefore, is grounded in common sense.
Specifically, it needs prudence, which is
"the faculty we use in applying general
principles to particular circumstance that
require decision and action."

The Aristotelian virtue of prudence
is very different from what we moderns
expect from policymakers. It is not
expertise. Leaders should not, and
cannot, be foreign policy, regional, social
policy, or economic experts. Leadership is
not mathematical knowledge and leaders
are not technocrats. But they must
possess a reasoned knowledge that allows
them to choose among the various policy
options that are presented to them. As
an example, the President cannot be an
expert in every field of policy under his
control, but he needs sound judgment in
the choice of his advisers. They are the
experts; he is the leader. As Lord writes,
leaders are "general contractors" of sorts:

[They] do not have detailed knowledge of
all the crafts that are needed to build a
house. What they must know, rather, is how
to coordinate and integrate the activities
of the specialized craftsmen who work for
them. And, equally important, they must be
capable of judging the final products of these
craftsmen, in terms both of their intrinsic
excellence and of their contribution to the
success of the overall enterprise.

In fact, there is a danger in experts
taking over the decisionmaking
process. Experts, by the nature of their
specialization, are more prone to see
only the interests of their own field and
are reluctant to make decisions on the
basis of the "common good." Lord gives
the example of the scientific community
being unable, and perhaps unwilling,
to stop the "morally monstrous
undertaking" of human cloning, in large

measure because of the belief in the need
to continue scientific progress regardless
of its social, human, and moral costs.

It is in such cases that leadership — or
prudential judgment — is most needed to
preserve the common weal.

How does one acquire common sense
or prudence? It appears deceivingly
easy, in large measure because it does
not require struggling through degrees,
academic theories, or books. In fact,
prudent judgment cannot be attained,
according to Lord, in a library or a
school. It is not a technical expertise that
can be studied as one studies architecture
or economics. Prudence, or reasoned
knowledge, is a rare talent, similar to
another characteristic of leadership,
charisma. And there is no easy formula
to acquire prudence. Lord again cites
Aristotle, who argued that prudence
could be developed only through
experience.

Carnes Lord concludes by
examining the main challenges faced
by democracies. This final chapter is a
modern version of the last chapter of
the Prince, which Machiavelli wrote as
an "exhortation to liberate Italy from
the barbarians." In the 15 th and 16 th
centuries, Italy was divided among
several city-states, unable to offer a
united front to the growing powers
of Spain and France. Luckily, modern
democracies are prospering and do not
appear near collapse, but Lord cautions
against complacency. In chapter 26,
he exhorts us to "preserve democracy
from the barbarians." Democracies may
appear stable, but like past regimes, they
are also prone to collapse under external
or internal pressures. The external threats
are perhaps the most evident. Over the
past few years, the "holy warriors of a
radicalized Islam are . . . the obvious
barbarians at the gates of the new
Rome of Western liberalism." But the
threats to democracy come also from
within, in the form of unassimilated
minorities from immigration or decay
of democratic ideals and practice. Lord
is particularly critical of the rise of
plebiscitary leadership, which leads to
decisions based on public opinion polls

and the abdication of difficult decisions,
especially in science and technology.

The Modern Prince makes ancient
wisdom accessible and relevant to
modern policymakers. It brings back to
political science insights that have been
lost amidst sterile academic theories. In
many ways, the greatest praise for this
book is the fact that it restores rather
than innovates. JFQ

A Book Review

By RANDALL J. LARSEN

A War of a Different Kind:
Military Force and America's
Search for Homeland Security

by Stephen M. Duncan
Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2004
366 pp. $29.95
[ISBN: 1-5911-4220-2]

I n the preface to A War of a Different
Kind, Stephen Duncan quotes an
observation from Will and Ariel
Durant: in 3,421 years of recorded
history, there have only been 268 years
free of war. Furthermore, Duncan states
that since 1783 the United States has
sent sizable military forces into harm's
way every 20 years. In a world of rapid
change, war is therefore a constant.
However, warfare in the opening decades
of the 21 st century will be "a different
kind of war." Duncan's superb analysis of
this new threat, new battlefield (both at
home and abroad), and new challenges,
requirements, and missions for the Armed
Forces makes this a must-read for all
military officers and for those interested
in national and homeland security.

The book is readable, informative,
and thought-provoking and is an
invaluable reference tool. Many recent

Colonel Randall J. Larsen, USAF (Ret.), is
CEO of Homeland Security Associates and
was Director of the Institute for Homeland
Security and Chairman of the Department
of Military Strategy and Operations at the
National War College.

112 JFQ / issue thirty-eight

OFF THE SHELF I

works on this subject have been long on
opinion but short on facts and analysis,
but A War of a Different Kind combines
well-documented facts and analysis with
a minimum of opinion. The endnotes
alone are of great value to the student of
homeland security.

Duncan's analyses range from
a perspective on strategic security
("conquering nations will threaten the
U.S. less than failed nations"), to the

organizational challenges, planning,
and coordinating defense "of a nation
of 87,000 different and sometimes
overlapping jurisdictions," to the
technological revolution that makes
the use of weapons of mass destruction
by either small nations or even well-
financed nonstate actors a certainty.

An overview of the "early years"
(1993-2001) highlights the frustrations
of those focused on the growing threat
to the American homeland. Despite
increasing numbers of attacks on
diplomatic and military targets overseas
and extensive intelligence analyses and
high-level commission reports warning
of attacks at home, the U.S. Government
failed to take action much beyond
cruise missile strikes aimed at empty
buildings and tents in the desert. The
General Accounting Office reported that
no coherent counterterrorism strategy
existed. Terrorism was treated as a crime.
However, former Clinton administration
officials have stated that neither the
Congress nor the electorate would have
supported significant military action

against al Qaeda or the Taliban in the
1990s. But that changed after 9/11.
Terrorism transformed from a crime to
a national security threat. Preemption
became a topic of hot debate, and
America once again looked to the Armed
Forces for answers.

The military stepped forward, but
according to Duncan, it was 40 percent
smaller than in 1989 and had seen 37
separate deployments between 1991
and 1999. The events of 9/11 sent
that military into hyperdrive. This
overstressed force is a theme throughout
the book. Of particular concern to
Duncan are the demands on the National
Guard and Reserve: "Army Reserve
Soldiers have been deployed 10 times in
the past 12 years. During the 75 years
before that, the Army Reserve had been
mobilized just 9 times." The problem
of dual hatting is also highlighted. (A
report from the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard University
highlighted the problem of triple hatting,
as with firefighters who moonlight as
ambulance drivers and also serve in the

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Action:
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Eliminating Adversary Weapons of
Mass Destruction: What's at Stake?

by Rebecca K.C. Hersman

Published for the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass
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issue thirty-eight / JFQ 113

■ off the shelf

Guard or Reserve.) Governors and mayors
depend on first responders and expect
augmentation from the Department
of Defense in major crises. Yet in the
summer of 2001, 652 officers and civilian
employees of the Los Angeles Police
Department and 236 deputies from the
Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department
were members of the Reserve component.
(A U.S. Northern Command exercise
demonstrated this problem when the
Nevada National Guard activated military
police units to assist during a mock
attack on Las Vegas that resulted in the
activation of scores of Las Vegas police
officers. This procedure is not additive
and can be disruptive.) Some would
say the Reserve component was well
organized, trained, and equipped for the
challenges and requirements of the Cold
War, but Duncan concludes that major
changes in the Reserve component are
necessary for this war of a different kind.

As the requirements change, so do the
rules. The chapter on posse comitatiis and
the following chapter on due process and
rules of war are arguably the highlights of
the book.

Joint Force Quarterly is
interested in your research!

Contributions

Joint Force Quarterly welcomes submissions of
scholarly, independent research from members of the
Armed Forces, security policymakers and shapers,
defense analysts, academic specialists, and civilians
from the United States and abroad.

Submit articles for consideration to Joint Force
Quarterly, ATTN: Acquisition and Review Editor, 300
Fifth Avenue (Bldg. 62, Room 212), Fort Lesley J.
McNair, Washington, DC 20319-5066; or via email to
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Submitted manuscripts must be complete and
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JFQ reserves the right to edit all contributions. JFQ
will afford authors an opportunity to review an edited
version via email and will consider changes, updates,
and comments within the given deadline.

Duncan, a highly experienced
lawyer and a former Assistant Secretary
of Defense who once served as the
Pentagon's senior drug war official,
explores the myths and facts of posse
comitatiis. Few legal issues are more
misunderstood by the military —
including some very senior officers. For
years, military leaders have used posse
comitatiis to avoid certain missions. While
understandable in terms of operations
tempo and cultural prohibitions, the fact
is that Federal forces have been used in
the past to enforce the law within the
American homeland, and they could be
called on again.

Terrorists operate outside the accepted
rules of conflict, sometimes causing
societies to change their rules regarding
due process and war. Duncan provides
insight, analysis, and comment on a
subject that should be of great interest to
all. The most interesting case concerned
terrorists arrested on U.S. soil and
tried in military courts. One suspect
even claimed U.S. citizenship. All were
convicted and sentenced to death.
Appeals took the cases to the Supreme

Court, arguing that these individuals
should be tried in Federal or state civilian
courts. The Supreme Court upheld the
military convictions. This case, known
as Ex Partre Qiiirin from World War II,
is of particular interest considering the
ongoing controversy in the case of Jose
Padilla, a U.S. citizen currently held in a
military brig for his alleged conspiracy to
use dirty bombs on homeland targets.

These two chapters on the legal aspects
of the post-9/ 11 environment are worth
the price of the book. They provide a
legal analysis that has sufficient detail for
lawyers yet is understandable to laymen.

This book also provides a superb
overview of Federal actions since the
attacks of 9/11. From the invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq to the bureaucratic
and political battles on the home front,
Duncan provides facts, analysis, and
commentary on this critical period.

A War of a Different Kind provides
a readable and informative history
plus analysis of the war on terror. I
recommend it to military officers and
others interested in 21 st -century national
and homeland security. JFQ

Contributions are submitted to the Office
of the Secretary of Defense for security review.
Servicemembers and Government employees are
not authorized payments or honoraria for publication
of articles.

JFQ is actively seeking
informative security studies
essays or joint research on:

■ Total Force and Reserve component issues

■ War on terror, battling extremists, lessons learned

■ interagency coordination and integration —
integrated operations

■ Transformation, experimentation, and
emerging capabilities

■ Homeland security and defense

■ interoperability (allies, services, U.S. Government
agencies, state and local government, support
personnel, etc.)

■ Coalition warfare/multinational response
to conflict/disaster

■ Logistics, intelligence, and
stabilization operations

■ U.S. security strategy or regional issues

■ Joint military history

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